CorteXlab Hands-on Tutorials for the 1st French GNU Radio Days

This tutorial will take place on our lab computers with the whole toolchain already installed. If you want to try this tutorial at home, we provide a virtual machine image which contains a ready to use instance of gnuradio, the same version as the one in the FIT/CorteXlab platform.

This VM image is provided in .ova format (open virtualization archive), which theorically makes it runnable on various virtualization software, but we only support virtualbox 5.2 or greater.

Thus, to be able to use this VM, you need to have:

• A computer
• An internet connection to be able to connect to the FIT/CorteXlab platform in particular:
  • we use port 2269 for ssh connection, some Wifi network might block these ports
  • The Tutorial will work from anywhere in the world, however launching GNURadio on the CorteXlab server might result in slow execution due to the latency of X window protocol.
• virtualbox version 5.2 or greater
  • Warning, precedent version of virtual box will probably not work

You can get the VM image from http://xp.cortexlab.fr/downloads/debian-jessie-cortexlab.ova (or on provided usb keys).

Once you have copied the ova to your laptop, follow these steps:

• execute: $ VBoxManage hostonlyif create (this will ensure that additionnal virtual network interface(s) are created before importing the VM)
• import the ova in virtualbox.

From there you can start the VM. You can connect to accounts cxlbusr or root, without any password. You can also connect to the VM with ssh. The network address to connect to depends on the operating system (use your OS interface managing commands or gui to get the IP address). On Linux, it will most likely be 192.168.56.101, so once the VM is started you should be able to $ ssh cxlbusr@192.168.56.101 or ssh root@192.168.56.101 (change the IP address accordingly, if it's different on your laptop).

You should usr the cxlbusr account since the GNU Radio FIT/CorteXlab toolchain is preconfigured in this account (it is installed in /home/cxlbusr/opt/cxlb-toolchain).

This VM is also preconfigured to allow easy connection to tutorial accounts on the FIT/CorteXlab platform. You can execute $ ssh tuto<X>@airlock. The appropriate keypair is already installed in the VM, you'll only need the passphrase of the key which will be given during the tutorial session.

Since we're all going to be using FIT/CorteXlab at the same time, a division of the resources is necessary. This will allow all groups to access the testbed without any conflicts.

First of all, all tutorial attendees will arrange themselves in groups of two. For each group, a list of resources is given at the beginning of each tutorial. If you're unsure of what resources to use, or if you weren't able to find a group, please refer to the tutorial personnel.

In this hands-on tutorial we will introduce the very basics of using FIT/CorteXlab, based on a very simple experiment. The step-by-step guide will introduce you to:

• Accessing the testbed
• Making and managing reservations
• Creating an experiment task
• Submitting the task
• Following the task's execution
• Retrieving the results

The tutorial can be found under this link: FIT/CorteXlab 101

This hands-on session present fft-web, a tool that can be used to monitor in real-time your experiment. It allows the visualisation of any signal that can be vectorised, as for example the spectrum usage in the CorteXlab room.

To access this tutorial go here: FIT/CorteXlab 102

This tutorial show haw to reuse tutorial from GNUradio community, such as OFDM or Narrow band PHY communication implemented in GNUradio, so as to run these on air in CorteXlab: FIT/CorteXlab 103

Let's have some radio fun!

Test your GNU Radio skills here : French GNU Radio Challenge 2018 !