Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] signal strength block

[Johnathan Corgan]

Ben Olsen wrote:

> I'm trying to determine the strength of a complex filtered signal from a
> USRP board; that is, I take the data from the USRP board and I lowpass
> filter it, and now I'd like to either fft then integrate the complex
> output to get the signal energy, or just straight away do a  sum on the
> sequence (a la Parseval's theorem).  Which method would be easier?  Are
> there any blocks that do this already? 

The "quick and dirty" method would be to run the signal through
gr.complex_to_mag() and then through gr.single_pole_iir_filter_ff() with
a suitable time constant.  This would give you a running average of the
signal magnitude.

The latest SVN code has a complex_to_mag_squared block; you do the same
as the above to get a running average of the RMS value.  You can use
gr.nlog10_ff() to convert either of these to a log scale.

For exact calculation of the energy of a specific interval you'll have
to write a new block that accepts a length of input equal to the
interval and outputs a single value (the energy).  In the block 'work'
function you'd accumulate the square of the sequence and output that
value at the right time.

So it all depends on what you're using the value for and how exact you
need it.

-Johnathan