[hpsdr] The Future of HPSDR?

[John Ackermann]

I'll stick my neck out, too, since I'm not in a position to help with 
this, but...

There's a software defined radio toolkit called Gnuradio 
(http://gnuradio.org/trac) that allows you to "build" an SDR in a few 
lines of high-level code.  It's written primarily for Linux but can be 
made to work under Windows.  It's been used to create cellular and WiFi 
systems, GPS receivers, and all nature of academic projects.

The software is hardware agnostic, but needs some sort of ADC/DAC device 
to do anythign useful.  There's a driver interface for the Ettus 
Research (http://www.ettus.com) USRP-1 (USB interface) and USRP-2 (GigE 
interface), and they have been the hardware used for most of the 
development.  The USRPs, though, are designed as very general purpose 
devices, and while they can operate at HF, they can't deliver nearly the 
HF performance or convenience of the HPSDR system.

An Gnuradio interface to HPSDR would be very, very cool.  It would 
enable a "toolkit" approach to SDR development.  As good as PowerSDR is, 
it's hard for the casual hacker to dig into, and its console structure 
limits what you can do with things like multiple receivers.  The KISS 
Konsole is more accessible, but is still built around a fairly fixed GUI 
design.  With Gnuradio, you can easily try out very different concepts 
in radio design.

I've been around long enough to know that "he who codes, rules" and that 
ideas are a lot easier than actions, but I think a Gnuradio HPSDR 
interface is a development effort that would pay dividends for a long 
time to come.

John
----
Paul Cecil said the following on 10/01/2009 06:19 PM:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> 
> I decided to stick my neck out and start a discussion. Where do we go 
> with HPSDR in the future? Sometime soon the last of the boards needed to 
> make a working HPSDR radio will have been completed. Is this the end of 
> HPSDR? We tell folks that HPSDR is "an open source (GNU type) hardware 
> and software project intended as a "next generation" Software Defined 
> Radio (SDR) for use by Radio Amateurs ("hams") and Short Wave Listeners 
> (SWLs)." It won't be long before the hardware that was used will be last 
> generation. So should we start working on HPSDR II? We have a flexible 
> system that will allow us to replace individual boards with upgraded 
> boards. It would be easy to just upgrade our current boards with faster 
> chips, but that is not necessarily next generation. Or, do we take-off 
> on a new direction? Do we start looking at a way of merging hardware and 
> software to make a more flexible radio as some have imagined? Wouldn't 
> it be great to be able to upload new firmware and have the hardware 
> rearrange itself to optimize the "radio" for the mode we want to use?
> 
> So fellow HPSDR enthusiasts... where do we go from here?
> 
> Paul Cecil
> KA5FPT
> Bath, Maine
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