Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Low cost hardware option

[Marcus D. Leech]

> Hi, i'm watching all discussion about poor students and the evil Mr 
> Ettus who don't play like Santa Claus and whant to make some profit 
> :). I'm also watching all topics and discussion regarding a low cost 
> solution for use with GNURADIO. I guess we can have a cheap option to 
> us and I'm 
I don't think anyone *seriously* thinks Matt is evil for wanting to make 
a profit from his hard labour.  That makes as much sense as insisting
  that Henry Ford should have produced cars at materials cost, and his 
labour force should have worked for free, "for the greater good".
  The fact is that Henry Ford contributed to "the greater good" *while* 
making a significant profit, and giving his workers a living wage, etc, etc.
  OMG, did I just compare Matt to Henry Ford?  Hmmmmm.  :-) :-)


But, I think the question "is there an approach to higher-bandwidth Gnu 
Radio compatible hardware that is simpler (and thus hopefully
  cheaper) than what is currently on the market, and can we reasonably 
totally-open-source the result" is a reasonable one.

> very interested in work in such a solution. What I'm suggeting here is 
> to take all people who want's to take the job and start a small 
> project. I'm a embedded systems enthusiatic and was a "starving 
> student", now I'm a starving engineer, since I'm unemployed, that have 
> some time to work on this project. The first question is: Ok, we need 
> a low cost solution with some possible applications  but what are the 
> limits?
Well, I posted a first-cut, potential block-diagram for the Rx side 
earlier today:

http://www.srbac.org/files/digital_receiver2.pdf

It covers a goodly swath of the bands of interest for hobbiests 
(68.75MHz to 2.2GHz).  One could substitute a different
  PLL synthesizer to cover different bands of interest.  In fact, if 
one added another level of output divider
  on the output of the ADF4350, one could go down to lower frequencies. 
 Hmmm.  Thinkage.  Looking at the datasheet
  for the AD5387, the part is only specced to go down to 50MHz, but 
looking at the plots, it will likely
  go down much lower (perhaps as low as 5MHz).  So adding another 
configurable, bypassable, divider stage
  on the output of the ADF4350 yields lower-frequency (in the HF bands) 
capability, and still provides coverage up to 2.2GHz.
  Actually, a single, fixed divider that is bypassable might give the 
required coverage, for example, a single /16 or something.
  Have to play with the numbers.


It will handle up to 20Msps, in 4 discrete steps  (2.5Msps, 5Msps, 
10Msps, 20Msps).

It specifies a generic FMC connector, so you could use it with an FPGA 
board that uses the FMC
  (FPGA Mezzanine Connector).

FPGA evaluation boards are available *relatively* cheaply, since I think 
folks like Xilinx sell them
  through distributors as "loss leaders" to get you into the mood to 
design-in their technology
  to mass-market devices.  But hey, if the Open Source community wants 
to leverage that little
  bit of market anomaly, that's just fine :-)

The approach is to combine the RF front-end with a modestly-capable ADC, 
and use the ADC output as the "demarc" point where
  you plug it into some kind of FPGA+GiGe motherboard (like the Xilinx 
eval boards), or perhaps an EZ-FX2 type board giving a USB-2.0
  interface.  The USB board would be the cheaper way of getting data 
out to the PC, with some provisos, like it won't do DDC, so you're
  limited to whatever reasonable frequency resolution you can get out 
of the PLL synthesizer.  With an FPGA board, you'll likely be able
  to do a DDC.

Perhaps somebody wants to work on a comparable block-diagram for the Tx 
side?  With roughly-comparable capabilities? One might make
  simplifying assumptions, like ADC and DAC clock rates are always 
common, which implies that the analog baseband filter selection would
  be common, etc, etc.

The FMC connector standard apparently provides for 68 signal paths. 
 That should be plenty.

--
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org