Ethernet SDR Interfacing

[Patrick Strasser OE6PSE]

wb4jfi wrote on 2010-09-11 22:16:
> I'm thinking of adding an Ethernet interface capability to the
> Charleston SDR receiver. This would also allow me to learn Ethernet
> interfacing with some of the newer designs. I'm looking at the Wiznet
> chips and modules, available from Sparkfun. They seem to offload all the
> Ethernet and PHY stuff into the chip, allowing the FPGA to concentrate
> on the SDR part.

Have you head a look at the Digilent Pmods, namely the PmodNIC? It is a 
stand alone 10Mbit/sec transceiver with SPI interface and interrupt line 
for receive for 30$.

> I'm concerned with USB interfacing, and how (at least with Windows)
> everything is getting more restrictive.

What do you mean with restrictive? Driver support, data rate, 
flexibility, line length?

For datarate, USB has gross bandwith of 480MiBit/sec, which boils down 
to a sustainable net datarate of 32MiByte/sec or even a bit more.

> Plus, Firewire is not as easy to
> use as it once was. Using E'net and UDP would move this into a more
> "stable" environment.

I guess you are looking at something similar to RFSpace netSDR or SDR-IP?

73 de Patrick
-- 
Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two
QTH: JN77rb
Patrick Strasser OE6PSE <oe6pse at wirklich priv at>