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Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Comparison between GNU Radio and FlexRadio


From: Ben Hoyt
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Comparison between GNU Radio and FlexRadio
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:35:42 +1300


For HF work, FlexRadio has a nice line of HF hardware and they provide the PowerSDR software that goes with it.  It's possible to talk to
their hardware (last time I checked) using other software.

Yes, I'm currently steering towards a FlexRadio running custom DttSP (or perhaps GNU Radio) software. PowerSDR looks like it's basically a nice GUI on top of DttSP.

Also, I just thought I'd relate my stream-of-consciousness findings after digging into the FlexRadio a bit more (probably most of this is old-hat to folks here):

* The FlexRadio does "direct down conversion" using a QSD (quadrature sampling detector), rather than traditional radios which go via an intermediate frequency, see this FAQ answer: http://www.flex-radio.com/Products.aspx?topic=faq#q5-genSDR

* Out of that you get two base-band signals (I and Q or I/Q, for in-phase and quadrature or orthogonal, basically a complex number).

* The FlexRadio samples those signals at fairly low base-band frequencies.

* So you can do this kind of thing with a sound card (e.g., the Softrock) but it's fairly low quality -- the FlexRadio receiver is basically higher fidelity and uses higher bandwidth ADCs (192KHz), but still not MHz-frequency ADCs like the USRP (32MHz bandwidth).

* As the page at http://www.flex-radio.com/Products.aspx?topic=faq says, "Once the I and Q signals are digitized, DSP algorithms perform all of the demodulation and signal enhancement eliminating the analog (and sometime digital) circuitry found in traditional radios which provide the same functions. Transmission is just the reverse of the RX process. There are no multiple IFs in a SDR."

* Here's a block diagram of the FLEX-3000: http://support.flex-radio.com/Downloads.aspx?id=266

* This document, written by the FlexRadio folks back when they were starting, has a fairly good explanation of the maths behind QSD in the section "From RF to a PC's sound card": http://www.flex-radio.com/Data/Doc/qex1.pdf

So the FlexRadio is ready-to-go for HF radio transmit and receive, but basically is only good for HF a bit above (up to 60MHz carrier freqs). The USRP is much more general purpose and uses much higher bandwidth ADCs (and has an FPGA), but isn't nearly so ready-to-go for HF stuff.

Cheers,
Ben.


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