[hpsdr] Radio Heads

[ad0es]

James,

I've just started to take my Phoenix receiver in that direction (more or 
less), go to May 1:

https://community.element14.com/technologies/fpga-group/b/blog/posts/direct-fourier-conversion-software-defined-radio-using-cuda-processing

With RX only antennas, there isn't exactly a "head", but this would 
place the ADC within a few feet of the antenna connection.  The 450' to 
the shack won't
incur any loss as its digital by then. And it allows the antennas to be 
in a much more optimal location, ie. the top of my mountain, not down in 
valley behind hills.

Steve AD0ES

On 5/1/23 4:26 AM, James wrote:
>
> 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?