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BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

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Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#13

Post by ChuckMcM »

stagger87 wrote: post #7

Impressive project. Writing all the VHDL including the FFT and Viterbi decoder... I'm genuinely curious where the ROI on a project like comes from? Selling hardware and training materials? I'm assuming there must have been significant interest from customers, or maybe this is an ambitious employees side project? Can't wait to see a demo or some pictures of it running. Would love to see more details about the DSSS dem…

Oddly enough, some folks like doing this because of the dopamine hit of really understanding how something works. FWIW I'm that kind of person :-). But I certainly understand it isn't for everyone.

The platform I've been using to explore stuff like this is an Ultra96 board with a LimeSDR as the receiver. The Ultra96 has the Zynq Ultrascale FPGA on it. Given that USB3 latency is < 10 uSec I am guessing (hoping?) I can implement it in the Ultrascale fabric which is fed IQ data from the USB 3.1 port.

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#14

Post by samstave »

How is it that an SDR is being praised for a $1K price-point, but I can buy an FM/AM radio for single-digit $ - yet I pay $1,000 for a cell phone today and it doesnt have a native FM/AM radio on it?

People keep saying "just use data" - which is what I think to be a fn bullshit response. give me a device that has actual FM/AM capabilities natively.

Seriously - the most high-tech wireless device in my pocket MUST include the *least* complex wifi capabilities which is over 100 years old by *DEFAULT*

Assume you are out if signal range - there are FEW places out of FM/AM range...

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#15

Post by vvanders »

chrissnell wrote: post #12

I remember the hate that closed-source Winmodem got back in the 90s but software-defined modems can be far superior to hardware. Case in point: direwolf. I think it decodes APRS better than any hardware solution. https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf

If you like direwolf you might want to take a peek at the M17 project[1]. They're looking to do the same thing with what's happened with proprietary radio protocols and looks really promising:

> M17 is a new digital radio protocol in development as an alternative to those currently available, with freedom in mind. Freedom in the code, protocol, voice codecs, and hardware. The goal is to provide a better option for digital radios in the future.

[1] https://m17project.org/

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#16

Post by ronsor »

axegon_ wrote: post #10

Veeery impressive! Side note: By pure coincidence I spent 5-6 hours this weekend playing around with an sdr dongle and a raspberry pi (specifically sending images over fm). And I have to say, the ecosystem around sdr's is annoyingly poor on linux(unsure about other os-es but it does seem windows has it better).

I feel like it's easier to toy around on Windows, but if you want to do anything (and I mean anything) serious, you'll need Linux. That's been my experience anyway.

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#17

Post by Reventlov »

Related projects:

- https://github.com/bastibl/gr-ieee802-11 (gnuradio transceiver by the amazing Bastian Bloessl)

- https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi (efforts to make a low-cost SDR Wi-Fi transceiver)

From my point of view, cool projects, all the hardware I have access to is closed source and sometimes I really wish I could just change some low level parameters in my Wi-Fi cards.

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#18

Post by dfox »

samstave wrote: post #14

How is it that an SDR is being praised for a $1K price-point, but I can buy an FM/AM radio for single-digit $ - yet I pay $1,000 for a cell phone today and it doesnt have a native FM/AM radio on it? People keep saying "just use data" - which is what I think to be a fn bullshit response. give me a device that has actual FM/AM capabilities natively. Seriously - the most high-tech wireless device in my pocket MUST inclu…

While receiving analog radio is trivial for the processing required, it is fairly low frequency transmission which requires antenna sizes which are not entirely practical for phone-like device. I would even assume that many phones contain the required hardware (which usually involve using headset cable as antenna) but don't have any kind of software support for it because of combination of minimal demand for such a feature and the fact that the entire experience is not exactly user friendly. Notably, Raspberry Pi uses wifi/BT radio which apparently either includes FM radio or used to in previous revisions (and apparently the radio chip is capable of receiving FM and directly sending the audio to BT headset, which is somewhat interesting feature given the usual requirement of wired headset as antenna).

Re: BladeRF-wiphy: Open-source, software defined radio modem

#19

Post by dfox »

wmf wrote: post #9

Weirdly they keep saying 802.11 but apparently it's 802.11a/g.

It is somewhat natural to just refer to 802.X standards as 802.X when implementing them as that is the correct name of the standard and you need to read most of it in order to implement it. If you want to talk about distinct added features it makes sense to use the name of TG (ie. 802.[number][letter]) that drafted the specification of said feature, but it is mostly only an handy shorthand.
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