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Azure software radio Out of Tree Module

The gr-azure Out of Tree (OOT) Module allows users to easily leverage Azure cloud resources from within a GNU Radio flowgraph. You can use this OOT module with your existing GNU Radio development environment, or within a VM in the cloud. Example use-cases involve storing and retrieving RF recordings from Blob (file) storage or creating complex cloud applications using Azure Event Hubs as a bridge between your flowgraph and Azure services. We are excited to see what can be created by combining GNU Radio with the power and scalability of the cloud!

For information on our GNU Radio developer VM available in Azure, see this guide. We also have a set of tutorials that use the developer VM and gr-azure.

Table of Contents

Getting Started

The following installation instructions will get you up and running with the Azure OOT Module on your local machine.

Prerequisites

This project depends on the GNU Radio 3.9.x or 3.10.x runtime and development dependencies. See the GNU Radio installation instructions for steps on installing GNU Radio from binaries (note that GNU Radio packaged with Ubuntu 20 is only 3.8). Some package managers do not automatically install all of the development dependencies, so you may need to separately install and configure some of them. The Azure software radio OOT module requires the following:

See the installation steps below for how to install these dependencies.

NOTE: If using the Azure CLI, you will need version 2.17.1 or newer. This module is not compatible with the Azure CLI availabile in the default apt repository on Ubuntu 20. If this older version of the Azure CLI is present on your system, the installation of this OOT module may fail or the module may crash at runtime. Please install the Azure CLI according to the recommendations found in AZ CLI Installation in Linux.

Installing Azure software radio OOT

The following steps show how to install this OOT module on a Debian-based OS with GNU Radio already installed. They have been tested to work under Ubuntu 20. If you see error messages after running any of the following steps, stop and check our FAQ for how to resolve the problem.

sudo apt-get install python3-pip cmake liborc-dev doxygen
sudo pip install pytest pybind11

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/gr-azure.git
cd gr-azure

sudo pip install -r python/requirements.txt

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

(If you run into a non-existent path error after cmake .., try recreating your build directory and use cmake -DCMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH=/usr .. instead)

At this point the OOT module should have been installed, and you should see additional blocks within GNU Radio Companion.

Running the Unit Tests

If you would like to run the QA tests, there are two methods:

  1. From within the build directory, run:

    make test

    You can review detailed test output (including any failures) in Testing/Temporary/LastTest.log.

  2. From within the python directory, run:

    python -m pytest qa_*

    Pytest will show detailed test results directly in the output of this command.

Resolutions to Common Problems During Installation and Tests

For a list common problems and resolutions, please check our FAQ to see if your issue has been addressed.

Examples

The examples folder has a collection of flowgraphs and supporting files that illustrate common ways of using the blocks provided in this module. See the README in the examples folder to get started.

Azure software radio Out of Tree Module Blocks

Key Vault Block

The Key Vault block allows users to pull down keys and secrets from an Azure Key Vault in GNU Radio. It is expected that the user will setup and store secrets in an Azure Key Vault prior to pulling down keys using this block. To create a Key Vault, see Create Key Vault.

For a brief tutorial on using this block, see the Key Vault Example.

Blob Blocks

The two Blob blocks (source and sink) provide an interface to read and write samples to Azure Blob storage in GNU Radio. Note that the SigMF Blob Source/Sink are simply wrappers around the regular Blob Source/Sink with SigMF mode set to True. It is expected that the user will setup a storage account and a container prior to accessing Blob storage with the Blob source and sink blocks. To create a storage account, see Create Storage Account.

There are several ways to authenticate to the Azure blob backend, these blocks support authentication using a connection string, a URL with an embedded SAS token, or use credentials supported by the DefaultAzureCredential class.

To determine the max speed at which samples can be downloaded or uploaded to/from Blob storage, for different Azure regions, run https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Download or https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Upload on the VM or machine running GNU Radio.

For a brief tutorial on using these blocks, see the Blob Examples.

Event Hub Blocks

The Event Hub blocks (source and sink) provide an interface to send and receive events to Azure Event Hubs using the message passing interface in GNU Radio. It is expected that the user will create an Event Hubs namespace, Event Hub entity and consumer group prior to using the Event Hub source and sink blocks. To create an Event Hub, see Create an Event Hub.

These blocks support multiple ways to authenticate to the Azure Event Hub backend, such as using a connection string, a SAS token, or use credentials supported by the DefaultAzureCredential class.

For a brief tutorial on using these blocks, see the Event Hub Examples.

REST API Block

The REST API block allows users to get status and configure a running top block in GNU Radio. It starts a server in the configured port and restricts which settings and variables in a flowgraph are readable, writable or callable.

To get status from a flowgraph, a user can hit the status endpoint as follow

curl -X GET http://<IP>:<port>/status

To configure or write the exposed variables, the following command

curl -X PUT http://<IP>:<port>/config -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"<variable>":<value>}'

To execute a callback or function within a top block, use the following route

curl -X PUT http://<IP>:<port>/call -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"<function name>":<parameter>}'

For a brief tutorial on using this block, see the REST API Example.

Frequently Asked Questions

For a list of common questions, including problems and resolutions, please check our FAQ

Support

This project uses GitHub Issues to track bugs and feature requests. Please refer to our Support Guide for more details.

Before filing a new issue, please check our FAQ for potential solutions to common problems.

Starting with GNU Radio maint-3.9, this project will support the same set of maintenance branches tracked by GNU Radio.

Contributing

Contributing Guide

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later - see the LICENSE file for details

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.