Winrad is a free amateur radio program conceived by Jeffrey Pawlan, WA6KBL, that implements many Software Defined Radio (SDR) functions which are needed for weaksignal reception including EME, troposcatter, cloudscatter, and very long distance microwave terrestrial contacts. It also works well for general HF. Jul 05, 2016 How to use SDR software in combination with the new Elektor SDR Shield to get the best listening results. More info here: https://www.elektor.com/elektor.
BladeRF - low-cost, professional USB 3.0 Software Defined Radio bladeRF is a Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform designed to enable a community of hobbyists, and professionals to explore and experiment with the multidisciplinary facets of RF communication. By providing source code, thorough documentation, easy to grasp tutorials, and a place for open discussion modern radio systems will be demystified by covering everything from the RF, analog, and digital hardware design to the firmware running on the ARM MCU and FPGA to Linux kernel device drivers. USB 3.0 interfaced through a Cypress FX3 ARM9 microcontroller. An Altera Cyclone IV FPGA provides the interface between the FX3 and RF transceiver.
This FPGA has single-cycle access embedded memory, hard 18x18 multipliers for dedicated DSP and many general logic elements ready to be programmed.Fully bus-powered USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Software Defined Radio300MHz - 3.8GHz RF frequency rangeIndependent RX/TX 12-bit 40MSPS quadrature samplingOn-board 200MHz ARM9 with 512KB embedded SRAM (JTAG port available)On-board 15KLE or 115KLE Altera Cyclone 4 E FPGA (JTAG port available). Here is an highly configurable RF, well suited for reasonable perf/cost ratio SDR projects, coming in a 9x9 mm 120 pins aQFN.
It covers 300 to 3800 MHz, with I/Q channels programmable from 1.5 to 28 MHz. 12 bits ADC and DAC are integrated. But remember to decimate in order to gain few bits, if you want to have quite high dynamic.12 bits is just enough in many cases. The 2.4 Hz resolution Frac-N synthesizer presents a phase noise roughly around -100 dBc at 800 MHz and -93 dBc in the 2 GHz region.
Not bad for a low cost wide band device. Noise figure and IP3 are acceptable.
Output power is annouced at 6 dBm CW in the datasheet. Datasheet is there. Here is an interesting low cost SDR 'thing' (Thank you Akash!) ASRP3 is based on a classical I/Q direct conversion architecture using ADL5380 I/Q demod chip from Analog Device, as well as their famous AD9262 10 MHz 16 bits sigma delta ADC. The AD9262 presents 87 dB dynamic over the 10 MHz range, due to the 16 bits.Which is good for the price! Indeed, final dynamic will not be 87 dBs due to input stages, but we should obtain pretty good results from this device anyway.And you can still implement clever decimation to increase dynamic on a reduced bandwidth.
This being said, this receiver will tune its 10 MHz SDR window from 400 to 4400 MHz, which opens a bunch of possibilities. Here we are, the new version is coming, and maybe already available. Same principle than original FunCube Dongle (A 'TV tuner like' radio in front of a low cost 16 bit soundcard ->USB chipset). But this time, sampling rate is 192 KSamp/s, and thus SDR coverage is close to 2 x 96 KHz which means 192 KHz.
And probably more important for potential users: RF coverage starts from 150 KHz to 240 MHz as well as 420 to 1900 MHz, bringing Shortwave capability in top of most used V-UHF spectrum capability. AFEDRI SDR is a direct sampling receiver, based on the AFEDRI8201 IC from Texas Instrument. It covers 0.1 to 30 MHz in normal mode, and can be extended to 150 MHz with some hardwave filtering modifications and some obvious performance compromises. The native oversampling rate is 76.8 MHz @ 12 bits. The 192 KSamp/s I/Q output is a 16 bit audio equivalent on USB, compatible with most of the SDR software. Cigna Well Informed Program Download Free. A specific control software is used in parallel to the SDR software in order to control the radio.
Specification of the AFEDRI8201 can be found here: Bloc diagram will be found here: And full schematics here. The SDR-ONE is a low cost, high performance transmit / receive module for experimentation and integration into products.
The module can be used stand alone or plugged into other products. It offers very high performance with the use of a 14 bit ADC/DACs.
The SDR-ONE RX/TX module offers 48,96 and 192 KHz receive bandwidths over I2S, optical audio (S/PDIF) and IQ analog out. In addition, up to 40 KHz of BW can be transmitted at a 48 Khz sample rate. The SDR-ONE sets the RX sample rate of the sound-card when using the S/PDIF or I2S outputs.
In TX, I/Q signal is received via the IQ analog input or the I2S master port. The FPGA and flash memory can be reprogrammed over the built in USB port in seconds without the need of a special programming cable. The FPGA UCF file and code examples are supplied for those willing to write their own code. Baudline is a time-frequency browser designed for scientific visualization of the spectral domain.
Signal analysis is performed by Fourier, correlation, and raster transforms that create colorful spectrograms with vibrant detail. Conduct test and measurement experiments with the built in function generator, or play back audio files with a multitude of effects and filters.
The baudline signal analyzer combines fast digital signal processing, versatile high speed displays, and continuous capture tools for hunting down and studying elusive signal characteristics. Source code is available. With a simple digital TV USB capture card, you can build your own software defined radio or spectrum analyzer. While it may not be as cool as [Jeri Ellsworth]'s SDR, it's still very useful and only requires $20 in hardware. However, be carefull, you have what you get for 20 $.I/Q interface is 8 bits which means around 48 dB maximum dynamics. This is OK for a single signal, isolated from others by physical filtering (TV signal indeed!), but not enough for narrowband multisignal handling (14 to 16 bits being a minimum).
A solution is to oversample your baseband, and then decimate to increase the effective number of bits. For example, if you oversample by 128 around 4 Msamp/s, you will obtain an effective sampling rate of around 31 Ksamp/s, thus a combined I/Q bandwidth of 31 KHz after digital filtering, with an effective number of bits of 8+3,5=11,5 bits (70 dB dynamic). Analyze of the used Realtek chipset shows analog I/Q signal if fed to digital A/D-USB chip via 4 capacitors (I/Q differential interface). It is then possible, through HW modifications, to interpose 2 differental analog baseband filters in order to improve the system in addition to oversampling. In conclusion, an interesting solution, close to the 'funcube dongle' concept, already presented here. But the funcube has more dynamic, by design. SDR MK1.5 Radio 'Andrus' is a shortwave Receiver covering 5KHz to 30 MHz with Network Interface.
It is based on the National Semi LM97593 Dual ADC / Digital Tuner / AGC chip. PM-SDR offers an excellent coverage/performance/cost compromise, for various 0.1 to 55 MHz SDR receive applications. It is a sum of 'little tricks' that leads to this point of optimisation. In addition, it is built in a small packaging.
Based on I/Q principle, it delivers an analog I/Q interface. Thus final performance is, as usual, partially dependant on your A/D's quality and dynamics (noise floor as well as linearity.Etc). If you use a sound card for such a purpose, be carefull with 'ugly' chipsets and/or designs. Potentially prefer an external high end one, like EMU0204. See RFHam site: PM-SDR is compatible with a large variety of SDR software.
You can buy PMSDR here.
The that I ordered via Elektor.com arrived yesterday. Since it was fully assembled, the only work required to check it out was to install the needed software and make connections to the PC's USB port and sound card line input. Here is a photo showing the 3 connections to the circuit: USB cable at bottom, stereo audio cord at middle, antenna wire at top. I included a quarter for size reference. The circuit board is about 3' x 4'.
With the required installed, the receiver was recognized upon connection to my PC. I started up the popular and began working through the configuration steps in the program documentation. At the procedure for calibrating the image rejection I was not able to achieve the expected rejection ratio.
This is probably due to inadequate antialias filtering in the sound chip on my PC motherboard. Here is a view of the calibration setup, where the image signal at 5024 kHz should be much lower than the 5000 kHz signal. Additional may confirm this issue, which can be overcome with an appropriate add-in or external sound card. More on that later... Certina Serial Number System.