[hpsdr] Radio Heads

[James]

Hi,

I see that there is a trend in other sectors, such as Satellite ground 
stations, to put a Digital Radio Head actually on the antenna.

The Radio head contains:

Analogue filter / pre-conditioning and analogue down mixer, ADC and SFP+ 
1/10G Ethernet fibre output using Vita 49.2 packets to send the digital I/Q.

For example:

Antenna -> RH attached to antenna -> 1/10G optic fibre cable -> SDR 
receiver in-doors.

An alternative to this is a Radio head that transmits the RF analogue 
over fibre.

In both cases it reduces the cable loses to essentially zero due to the 
use of fibre optics in for the transmission line.

The Transmit would place the HPA on the antenna also.

Satellite Comms tends to use 1Ghz or above, with general TX powers of 
15W and generally low RX S/N. This is quite a contrast to the lower 
1-30Mhz bands, where TX powers can be above 100W and generally higher RX 
S/N

Is this appealing to the openhpsdr community, or is it considered too 
expensive to be seriously considered?


Kind Regards

James