NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

A few reasons:

(1) The AFE7903 wouldn't allow for any modularity in the system (look at what we are calling the RFNM interface on the website, I think that's the real reason this platform will work),

(2) Pricing, that single chip would cost in quantity 1k more than our current BOM, and you still need to add FPGAs, frontend, etc. next to it.

(3) Those single chip frontend modules don't have the embedded DSP cores we can use to do things like processing FFTs in real time and feeding them to a browser with no computing on the host, which I think will be very cool (multiple 160 MHz FFTs with a gr-phosphor like visualisation I think has never been done before at this price point).

The Granita board should already work down to 10 MHz. If you need to go lower, I (or someone else) would need to design a custom RFNM daughterboard for low frequencies. You could do direct conversion up to 150 MHz, so it should be a simple task and come with good performances.

All existing SDR software should be supported via OsmoSDR.

Yes, it should work as a coherent receiver. There are some questions about unmatched I/Q pair trace lengths, but from what I heard from the experts as long as the clock is coherent (which it is), we should be able to correct those in software.

I can't commit to pricing before I have decided on a partner for the distribution (DIY vs Kickstarter vs Crowdsupply, they all come with different costs and tradeoffs), but $550 is my target retail price for the Motherboard + Granita + Dev Board + CNC enclosure combo. $450 if you are happy with the Granita Lite board. Everything will be sold separately.

As a comparison, $550 would be 10x to 20x less expensive than what's on the market today for similar bandwidth specs (Aaronia Spectran V6 and Ettus USRP).

I don't like them either, but I couldn't find a better way to provide the clock in/out feature and still fit in that area of the board. The optional OCXO on the opposite side of the U.FL connectors doesn't help (can't do edge-launch mmcx, for example), and if you move down you would ruin the legend for the user interface connector.

But fair feedback, noted. I can't move the optional OCXO below the enclosure, as that would be taller than the aluminium block itself and require a slot breaking the RF shielding, but maybe I can move the connectors. I'll try and get creative.

Edit, surface-mount MMCX to the rescue? https://i.imgur.com/1GJhJa6.png

Just trying to get my head around SDR.

What are some examples of practical use cases for a platform like this? What are the benefits of this SDR platform compared to other solutions?