The Signal Processing for Communications Laboratory was founded in November 2011 within the Project of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia for establishing and supplying laboratories at the public Universities. The Head of the Laboratory is Professor Venceslav Kafedziski. The initial equipment included three Sofwtare Defined Radio (SDR) platforms, a video platform and DSP development boards. Additional development boards were donated by Texas Instruments. Recently, sophisticated measurement equipment, computer workstations, Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms and a professional hexacopter have been purchased from the funds obtained by the NATO SPS G5208 project.
The Laboratory currently includes the following equipment: Rohde & Schwarz vector signal generator with 3.2 GHz frequency range and 120 MHz bandwidth, Rohde & Schwarz digital oscilloscope with 3 GHz frequency range and 10 GSamples/s sampling rate; Keysight signal and spectrum analyzer with 3.6 GHz frequency range with real time spectrum analysis and analysis bandwidth of 160 MHz; Keysight Vector Network Analyzer with 9 GHz frequency range and 135 dB dynamic range; two National Instruments (NI) Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA based SDR platforms with 6 GHz frequency range and 160 MHz bandwidth, 3 Sundance SDR platforms and 1 Sundance video platform, 12 DSP and 2 video TI development boards, 10 TI sensor RF platforms, two HP Z440 computer workstations, PCs, raspberry Pi microcomputers, cameras and microphones, and DJI Matrice 600 Pro professional hexacopter that can carry up to 5.5 kg load and achieve maximum flying speed of 65 km/hour.
Signal Processing for Communications Laboratory
The main use of the Laboratory is for educational, research and applicative activities. These activities include laboratory exercises, preparation of undergraduate, graduate and PhD theses and dissertations, development of prototypes of new FPGA based devices for communications and radar systems, building experimental testbeds, implementing signal processing algorithms for mobile cellular (5G, 6G), WLAN and radar systems, including modulation and error control coding techniques, Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas and smart antennas, and DSP algorithms for real time processing and coding of speech, audio, video and loT signals.
