[hpsdr] [apache-labs] RE: Free SDR Software

[Phil Harman]

Hi John,

Thanks for your excellent overview of where we are heading with the Radio and PC software.  Your are quite correct that the changes are mainly  being made for data transfer efficiency reasons.  

The current Ethernet protocol is a wrapper round the USB protocol we developed way back in January 2006.  Whilst this served us well when we only had a few receivers it becomes very inefficient with multiple receivers. It’s also unable to support multiple receivers at different sample rates.

We will also be introducing time stamping of received signals that will allow for very exciting experiments to combine signals from multiple radios, both locally and internationally via the Internet. 

As in the past, we do intend to maintain PC software compatibility between openHPSDR hardware and the ANAN-* range of radios.

In parallel with this work is a complete replacement of the PC DSP library (DttSP.dll) in order to support the new features.

I’m really relieved  to hear this is not a tremendous amount of work....because it sure feels like it at the moment 

For openHPSDR users the only downside of this is that we many not be able to support all the new features and ideas when using the Ozy USB board.  However, TAPR have a brand new stock of  Metis boards fresh from the factory so it may be a good idea to move to Ethernet whilst there are boards available. 

73 Phil...VK6PH 

From: John Laur 
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2013 2:26 AM
To: apache-labs at yahoogroups.com 
Subject: Re: [apache-labs] RE: Free SDR Software

  

Actually from what I understand the Ethernet protocol is about to change a great deal. Metis/Hermes/Angelia currently use a scheme whereby the HPSDR USB protocol (Used by Ozy) is encapsulated into UDP packets. The new protocol instead will be more friendly to it's medium (Ethernet+UDP) and use separate packet streams for command and control, rx/tx audio, tx i/q, and reciever rx i/q data. 

The new protocol has many advantages. It will make it simpler to encode/decode a packet; it has considerably less overhead; it can support multiple sample rates simultaneously, and it is theoretically simpler to implement in the FPGA. But from a software engineering standpoint (on the PC), It doesn't really make much difference. In SDR software for either protocol, there is a packet decoder that is taking data out of UDP and putting it into various queues and an encoder that is taking data out of queues and putting it into packets in both circumstances. Neither protocol is terribly complicated at the current time, so I would not estimate a tremendous amount of work to implement or move between either protocol on the PC side of things...

As far as the 100D goes, the Angelia does currently and in the future will continue to use the same protocol as Hermes and Metis from what I understand. The current difference is a couple of command and control bits that allow the RX2 step attenuator to be independently adjusted on Angelia. The mappings of receiver #'s to ADC's are different in the FPGA code but again the protocol is the same. The new protocol will have the ability to accommodate multiple synchronous receivers interleaved within a single UDP stream. I would presume this would not change until someone develops some significant enhancements to Angelia that could not be s upported on other HPSDR hardware.

John KF5SAB



On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Jerry Flanders <jeflanders at comcast.net> wrote:

    
  At 10:52 AM 9/14/2013, TI4/N0URE wrote:

  >...
  >The ANAN-10 and ANAN-100 are using the TAPR Hermes card... ...the 
  >FPGA code for the TAPR card is stable. ..
  >...I think that the protocols between the Hermes and the PC are 
  >stable and all the code is Open Source and ready ... ...The 


  >ANGELIA ANAN 100D is another story.


  Tell us the story on the 100D, please.

  Jerry W4UK 



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