Microsoft's SDR platform - SORA

[Lin HUANG]

Hello All,

I'd like to share with you that, I attended a workshop about SDR at
Sept. 20. Microsoft is promoting its SDR hardware and software
platform, named SORA, develop in MSRA. This is a platform similar with
GNU Radio / USRP, but much better in speed and latency.

They are sellecting maximum up to 20 research projects in
universities. They will provide platform and a little funding. Maybe
you can apply if you have good idea. :)

------------------------------

Special Preview Workshop: Microsoft Research SOftware RAdio (Sora)
platform
Sep 20, 2009
Beijing, China
Microsoft Research invites you to attend a special preview of our new
SOftware RAdio (Sora) research platform on the Sunday before MobiCom
2009 in Beijing.
Sora is a fully programmable software radio platform for researchers,
developed by Microsoft Research Asia. Sora allows all physical layer
and MAC layer processing be implemented in software running on a
commodity general-purpose CPU, while achieving equivalent performance
and fidelity to commercial dedicated hardware.
Sora uses both hardware and software techniques to address the
challenges of using PC architectures for high-speed SDR. The Sora
hardware components consist of a radio front-end for reception and
transmission, and a radio control board for high-throughput, low-
latency data transfer between radio and host memories. Sora also makes
extensive use of features of contemporary multi-core processor
architectures to accelerate wireless protocol processing and satisfy
wireless protocol timing requirements.
We are currently building an SDK for the platform which we plan to
release to the academic community to facilitate innovative wireless
research. As a precursor to this release we are previewing the
platform and its capabilities at this special workshop preceding
MobiCom 2009.
Later this year we will be inviting the academic research community to
submit research proposals based on this platform, and to convene a
community of pioneer researchers using and showcasing the platform.
More details on this program will be announced at the special preview
event.
More information on Sora is here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/sora/default.aspx

[Chao Dong]

我们可以讨论一下SORA和USRP的区别啊，参加过workshop的同志能否共享一下会上的讨论。

[High Mesh China]

我说两句吧，非通信专业人士，说的不一定对，大家随便拍。
首先，网站上没有找到SORA的原理图，不会不公开吧，那样的话所谓“Open Platform"就有点儿扯了。没有原理图，至少我要把它port到Linux下就没戏了。
其次，SORA所说的最大优势是用了PCIe接口，其实这个想法美军很早就用了，而且是比PCIe还牛的专用总线协议。
我们去年也曾经想过用PCIe，但是没有实施，原因很简单：目前PC机的CPU主频大多数在2-3G左右，你搞一个理论上16.7G的传输速率，谁能处理过来？
因此，这个所谓的优势看似先进实则不实用。USRP2的1G Ethernet接口已经足够用了，至少对于当前以及今后数年内的PC来说。
最后，还是要赞一下谭师兄的大作，把GNU和M$的战争延伸到了SDR领域。

2009/9/29 Chao Dong <dch...@gmail.com>

[CHAO DONG]

我也比较担心SORA的开放性问题，GNU
Radio/USRP之所以现在在科研机构如此盛行，很大原因就是用的人比较多，大家有一个比较开放、宽松的讨论环境，而SORA基于Windows系统，虽然可以以API函数的形式供用户调用，但开放性总归是个问题。
还有一个问题，我觉得很关键。就是我们是用平台，所以只要平台满足需求就可以了，平台肯定要一步一步更新的，现在Microsoft有了Vista，但国内没有多少人在用，就很说明问题。

我对SORA和USRP的态度是，如果SORA的开放性足够，是值得尝试的。但USRP在现阶段还是可以解决我们的大部分问题的。

顺便问一句，USRP2可以在国内买到么？

2009/9/30 High Mesh China <high...@gmail.com>:

--
Chao Dong
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University
Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210093 China PR.
Institute of Communication Engineering
Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210007 China PR.
Tel:13851917021

[Lin HUANG]

会上的ppt我还没要到，要不我再发个邮件问问。几个发言者都比较了USRP/WARP/SORA这几个平台，大致的意见都差不多，就是USRP性能差点，但是便宜；WARP好，但是贵；SORA这个东西刚出来，很好，大家都来试试。另外都说到对现在SDR硬件平台的respect，这个我觉得总结得很好。大家的意见也都差不多（我记得不太清楚，印象深的就这么几点）：1. better radio。SDR的本质不是software，而是radio，一个高质量的radio信号是非常重要的，当然高质量往往意味着高价格；2. interface。就是希望各种平台能不能提供比较通用的接口。3. metric. 大家的paper使用不同的平台，或者不同的scenario去评估自己的算法。但是没有一个统一的准则去评估性能。这不像simulation，有SNR, BER这样通用的参数。

 

开放性这个问题会上是有人提过的，貌似不会完全开放。

 

我觉得PCIe的问题是扩展性不够好。USB口数量很多。而LAN，如果USRP2的LAN可以配IP，接交换机就更好了。

 

PCIe能不能处理过来，关键是信号处理的算法写得好不好。这点我觉得MS做得很强，他们的这部分代码如果公开就好了，这些高速的代码即使不用在SDR，用在simulation上也是很好的嘛。

2009/9/30 CHAO DONG <dch...@gmail.com>