Software Defined Radio

[Maitland Bottoms]

Jeff Scaparra writes:
 > Hello Webmaster,

Hello newly licensed ham!
I'm sending this along to AMRAD's general discussion "Tacos" list.
If you can make it there is a meeting tonight at the McLean library.

 > There aren't any links or ways to contact people on the SRD page so I am
 > emailing you in hopes of finding more information. I recently acquired a
 > USRP N210 and it is pretty great additionally I passed my technician test
 > last week and plan on moving all the way up to extra soon. I am a computer
 > scientist and SDR is the reason I became interested in RF to begin with. I
 > would like to talk with Terry. I am going to build a interface for my radio
 > that would likely be very interesting to the Hams as well as other RF
 > technicians. I plan to use Qt and Qt-Creator (as my ide) much like you guys
 > have proposed on your page. My concern is that from playing with gnuradio I
 > don't think that software can handle the wide bandwidth that these modern
 > SDRs can provide. I would like to build a FPGA image that could process FFTs
 > and DDC different samples of the frequency in smaller batches for software
 > processing. In this way I could look at a large segment of bandwidth and
 > grab a part of multiple parts out as needed. I think this is a good approach
 > but I have zero FPGA experience and only a little verilog experience from
 > school. Additionally the N210 uses the Xilinx Spartan 3 DSP 3400 FPGA which
 > requires software that cost quite a bit. There is an evaluation version
 > which is what I am using for now. I would like to collaborate if there are
 > opportunities to do so as I imagine there would be people in your
 > organization/club that are more experienced with FPGAs and electronics than
 > I.
 > 
 > Thanks,
 > 
 > Jeff (KK4EPP)

The USRP N200 can be programmed from the freely downloadable Xilinx Webpack ISE,
and I think the new USRP B100 can be programmed with no-cost tools as well.

Several of us picked up Digilent FPGA boards, programmed with Webpack, and
use it to talk to the Charleston receiver.

I too, started not too long ago with zero FPGA experience. While I was motivated
with Radio as a goal, I've done lots of learning about and using FPGAs, but
have not yet really gotten on to SDR projects.

I've noticed that oz9aec has a very nice Qt SDR GUI: Gqrx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thwTk5tm8E4

Good to meet you,
- Maitland