A software defined radio based data link design for VHF band wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we present an overall data link design for a tactical wireless sensor network operating at VHF band considering software defined radio (SDR) approach. An empirical channel modeling for the target environment is developed, and the large and small scale statistics of the wireless channel are obtained. Then, the physical layer properties including modulation, channel coding, frequency hopping are designed according to the power and bandwidth efficiency requirements. Additionally, the medium access control (MAC) and automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocols are designed and the complete end-to-end system is tested in the field using the SDR platform. The measurement results are promising for the proposed datalink of the VHF wireless sensor networks operating in the dense hilly environments.