Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] zero ninput_items

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Nemanja Savic <address@hidden> wrote:

Hello guys again!

Based on Martins suggestion and Marucs' explanation I copied some principles from sync_interpolator and situation looks much better. I used function set_output_multiple and set_relative rate and now the outcome of calling forecast function is much better. For example, for symbol rate of 10k and sampling rate of 500k i get following:

ninput_items_required 8, noutput_items 4000
ninput_items_required 4, noutput_items 2000
ninput_items_required 2, noutput_items 1000
ninput_items_required 1, noutput_items 500
ninput_items_required 8, noutput_items 4000

And as u can see it always offers integer multiple of samp_rate/sym_rate. The problem comes now when i run the flowgraph with vector source that repeats the pattern. After calling forecast program executes work function but it provides me 32768 input samples which is of course silly:

work function, ninput: 32768, noutput: 4000

I don't really get what might be a problem, cause when vecotr source doesn't repeat the patern everything is fine.

Thank you and best

Nemanja
On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Marcus Müller <address@hidden> wrote:
Hm, I don't know why this should really happen before your source's work function is called.
But basically, maybe this is part of GNU Radio trying to figure out how to assign buffers; I haven't dived very deep into that aspect of the runtime.
However, since your forecast told GR that you're able to produce samples without input, I could imagine that your work gets scheduled simultaneously with those of your sources.
To circumvent that, just don't lie ;) and tell the scheduler that you need input to produce output.

Greetings,
Marcus

On 20.10.2013 13:11, Nemanja Savic wrote:
Thank you Marcus very much. I would like to ask some more questions.

For me it looks like the problem is at very begining when source has not produced any output, and it looks like forecast of my block is called before the work functino of the source? How should one cope with this? By checking if required number of input samples is zero and solving that case? How is that ensured for interpolator.

Thanks and kind regards,

Nemanja
On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Marcus Müller <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi Nemanja,

Considering following flowgraph, assume your block is A, and assume all blocks work with the same itemsize.
$\fbox{\textrm C}\rightarrow\fbox{\textrm B}\rightarrow\fbox{\text{\textbf{A}}}\rightarrow\fbox{\textrm D}$

good question, but basically, when running, when A is done with a run of work, it's thread notifies blocks "upstream" (B in this case) that it has consumed input items, making that space available for new output; GNU radio then calls forecast of B with a noutput_items $M_i = floor( 2 ** ( floor(log_2 N) - i) <= N, i in {0,1,...,floor(log_2 N) +1}$ to fill that space. However, if the upstream block B needs more input items than C has provided, GNU Radio will repeatedly reduce the number of samples it asks for until B needs less or equal samples as C has produced.

In your case, this only happens for 0 output items; thus your general_work gets called with 0 input items, as Martin already stated.
So what happens then? Since A has not provided any more output items for the blocks downstream, D can't do anything that it has not already been doing. The downstream part of the flowgraph stalls. Upstream part: Since GNU Radio has not been able to supply you with more than 0 input items, we can assume that the upstream part of the flowgraph is stuck, or done.
Therefore, execution ends here.

Greetings,
Marcus

On 10/18/2013 03:19 PM, Nemanja Savic wrote:
Thank you Martin, I will try with the sync_decimator, but it is also important for me to unterstand what's happening here.

So, I have vector source -> throttle -> fsk_modulator -> scope sink.

Vector source generates 8 symbols. From where scheduler starts, from source or from the sink? And why it didn't stop for any value before 0? What should I add into general block to avoid this?

Thank you

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Martin Braun (CEL) <address@hidden> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 02:32:48PM +0200, Nemanja Savic wrote:
> The body of my forecast function is:
>
> ninput_items_required[0] = noutput_items * d_sym_rate / d_sampling_freq;
> printf("ninput_items_required %d, noutput_items %d\n", ninput_items_required
> [0], noutput_items);

If d_sym_rate and d_sampling_freq are integers, integer division will
cause ninput_items_required to be zero for small values of
noutput_items.

> when i run execution, the output is following:
>
> ninput_items_required 8, noutput_items 4096
> ninput_items_required 4, noutput_items 2048
> ninput_items_required 2, noutput_items 1024
> ninput_items_required 1, noutput_items 512
> ninput_items_required 0, noutput_items 256
> ninput: 0, produced: 0
>
> The last line of the output comes from general_work function and prints number
> of input items and number of produced output samples.
>
> Can somebody explain me why forecast is called 5 times, till number of input
> items reach 0, and after that nothing is possible in work function, cause it
> won't enter the loop since ninput_items = 0;

Depending on the state of the buffers, the scheduler calls forecast()
until it finds a value of ninput_items_required that works (it tries to
process as much as possible). In your case, there is probably some
situation where the input buffer is not full.
The way you've set up forecast(), the scheduler will eventually find out
that it doesn't need any items to produce at least 256 output items. So
it calls work() with no input data, expecting 256 output items.
But since you can't produce anything without input, nothing happens.

It seems like what you want is a sync_decimator, got a gr::block. This
means you set relative_rate in the ctor and don't need to handle all of this
yourself. Make sure you don't set relative_rate to zero, again!
In a sync_decimator, you won't need forecast() at all and your work
function is much simpler. The scheduler will also never try to call a
sycn_decimator w/o input.

MB

--
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Communications Engineering Lab (CEL)

Dipl.-Ing. Martin Braun
Research Associate

Kaiserstraße 12
Building 05.01
76131 Karlsruhe

Phone: +49 721 608-43790
Fax: +49 721 608-46071
www.cel.kit.edu

KIT -- University of the State of Baden-Württemberg and
National Laboratory of the Helmholtz Association

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From:	Nemanja Savic
Subject:	Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] zero ninput_items_required[0]
Date:	Tue, 22 Oct 2013 14:22:20 +0200

Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] zero ninput_items_required[0]