Radio Diversity Automation

About the Project

Radio Diversity Automation is a senior design system developed to demonstrate reliable wireless communication using low-cost, commercially available hardware. The project originally began as a passive aircraft detection system, but after sponsor funding was pulled, the team pivoted to a new problem area: improving signal reliability in challenging RF environments.

Using one broadcast transmitter and three independent receiver nodes, the system performs real-time radio diversity, comparing SNR and RSSI across multiple antenna branches to automatically select the best link at any moment. The goal was to demonstrate measurable diversity gain using only COTS hardware instead of high-cost multi-input SDRs.

The system architecture, built from three Raspberry Pi receivers and a central Pi, supports wireless TCP audio streaming, per-branch DSP processing, and multi-mode decision logic (Manual, Threshold, Auto). This architecture is detailed in the Hardware Block Diagram and Software Block Diagram of the project.

Core testing, spatial, frequency, and time diversity, demonstrated consistent improvements in SNR, signal stability, and audio clarity. These results verify the benefits of diversity-based signal selection and highlight the scalability of this architecture for future work in localization and more advanced SDR platforms.

This project shows how adaptability, engineering rigor, and strong teamwork can transform constraints into a fully functional and meaningful RF communication system that is affordable, practical, and extensible.