Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] the in-band timestamp

[Eric Blossom]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 07:40:40PM -0400, George Nychis wrote:
> Okay, Brian brought this up to me in an off-list discussion that we 
> think needs to be discussed about the current timestamp generation.
> 
> Referring to:
> http://gnuradio.org/trac/browser/gnuradio/branches/features/inband-usb/usrp/fpga/inband_lib/rx_buffer_inband.v#L37
> 
> The current timestamp runs at the decimated rate, when we're tossing it 
> up for discussion if it should be driven from the free running 64MHz clock.
> 
> Leo and I are in the middle of implementing/debugging some other 
> functionality that I want to finish before touching this, but it's worth 
> discussion ahead of time.
> 

The Rx timestamp should be based on the 64MHz clock, and should be
logically inserted at the tail end of the Rx DSP pipeline (the end
nearest the host).

With regard to the Tx path, Matt & I came to the conclusion that the
time clock should be the 64MHz clock, and that the time check should
be at the head of the DSP pipeline.  That is, after the FIFO, but
before the signal processing.

This does imply that the host needs to know the pipeline delay, group
delay, and needs to provide padding for the head and tail of a burst.
After quite a bit of face-to-face discussion, this seemed to be the
only strategy that made sense.

Matt, if I got any of this wrong, please chime in.

Eric