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Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Re: A Humble Request.... - "Open-Hardware"


From: Moeller
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Re: A Humble Request.... - "Open-Hardware"
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:07:07 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7

On 09.01.2011 05:48, Brian Padalino wrote:
>> Hello Mr. Ettus,
>> Do you have any plan to reduce price for USRP1 or release PCB layout for
>> poor students?
> So lets figure out something that is worth while for you to do -
> simulate something.  Simulate anything!  There is a channel simulator
> built into GNU Radio.  Use it.  Get familiar with it.  Familiarize
He didn't ask for a simulator, he asked for real hardware.
If you count the material cost plus some reasonable benefit
(20%), I think it can be much cheaper than now.
And hey, it's not real "Open Source Hardware" if there's just
a paper schematics copy. I got that also for my TV and VHS videorecorder.
Real Open Source Hardware means that you get all the EDA files
you need to modify and reproduce the hardware. Same as for
Open Source Software. Nobody wants to copy larger amounts of source
from a paper book. In the GNU world you're used to have it all under control.
So, why not produce a GNU EDA variant of a Gnuradio Hardware?
There's a gEDA suite that should do it. I wouldn't mind, if the board would
be larger or less integrated.

I think there should be a variant of the Gnuradio hardware for hobbyists,
students and people with little income. They can't affort €1000 for
those "toys". It would be nice to have such a box as a signal generator,
signal-, logic-, spectrum- analyzer, signal recorder etc.
For private experiments you don't necessarily need all those USRP2
features like MIMO expansion, 100 MS/s if you can use only 25 MS/s.
About 10 MHz BW would be a good start for a hobby Gnuradio SDR.

I saw some simpler approaches with a sound card. But that's really
narrow band. Not very much for a spectrum analyzer.
The SSRP approach seems to be more interesting:

http://oscar.dcarr.org/ssrp/

It has a 15 MS/s ADC, 40 MS/s DAC, he counts $120 for the ADC board.
There's software to interface with Gnuradio.

> I implore you, as a student, to write papers using GNU Radio, create
> and simulate systems using GNU Radio, and get your BER curves where
> you think they should be using GNU Radio.  When you accomplish that,
You can do this with a student version of MATLAB. There are many communications
modules, more than in Gnuradio. The channel simulator has lots of models,
for GSM, WLAN, HF etc., you have the plotting capabilities for BER graphs.
Similar functionality you will find in GNU Octave and Scilab.
A special feature of Gnuradio is the integration of real hardware and processing
of continuous signal streams. You don't need all that for just creating a few 
simulated
BER curves.
> competent, I doubt this line of questioning will be any better than
> interrogating a brick wall.
It's not a wrong question to ask for cheaper hardware that everybody can afford.




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