Development of a programmable wireless receiver platform for electrical engineering education
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- The LimeSDR Mini reached end of life, leaving the LEPL2102/2103 courses of the EPL (Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain) without a practical way to access raw baseband signals for hands-on labs. This work fills that gap with a receiver platform that fits the existing workflow and remains easy to understand and maintain. The design targets the sub-GHz band and keeps the established toolchain. A Microchip AT86RF215 front end on a REB215-XPRO-A board produces raw I/Q over an LVDS link. A DE10-Nano SoC FPGA captures the stream, performs basic integrity checks, and writes samples into system memory. The Hard Processor System forwards the data over UDP to a host PC where the flow is ingested by GNU Radio. The signal path is straightforward to follow from the antenna down to complex samples on the computer. The contribution is a complete and documented replacement for the LimeSDR Mini in receive mode. It includes SPI bring-up of the radio, a stable LVDS capture in the FPGA fabric, a DMA pipeline to the HPS, and a host path that preserves packet order and flags gaps. The platform is reproducible, compatible with Quartus, and ready for labs focused on signal acquisition and early demodulation.