Newbie DSP Questions

historical

Hi

Thank you so much Thomas, I learned too much from you.

Is there a good sample for UHD USRPs like USRP N210 which can send and receive file in other side?

I connected 2 USRPs to 2 laptops, sent a file using rx_send_from_file.py in ARFCN channel no: 560 and in other side I listened for incoming signals on same frequency, same sampling rate, same gain, etc. Two USRPs was about 10 meters far from each other. But I was not able to see my file's context in rx_recv_cfile.py, it captures cfile from same ARFCN channel using same frequency and sampling rate, but I was not able to see any related data to my file being trasmitted, any reason you can see here?

I heard that USRPs need hardware modification to be able to capture GSM signals, is it correct for N210?

Could you guide me a little on translating frequency to channels, low-pass filter and performing sample rate conversation? When I receive file using rx_recv_cfile, it asks for sampling rate parameter, it will not do all those steps? If not, please help me on this part which is your previous email's last part, I need a little more detail here.

Thank you once again

________________________________
 From: Thomas Tsou <ttsou at vt.edu>
To: Avner Ezra <avner.ezra at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "baseband-devel at lists.osmocom.org" <baseband-devel at lists.osmocom.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 10:41 PM
Subject: Re: Newbie DSP Questions

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Avner Ezra <avner.ezra at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A) Sometimes when I scan a network bandwidth like GSM1800 using kalibrate, I
> see some channels like 820, 538, etc. When I re-scan, I cannot find them.
> Does this mean that kalibrate finds a channel when a mobile handset has a
> live conversation or sms send or receive in progress? or what?

No, it most cases it means a weak signal. Kalibrate performs
per-channel energy detection prior to offset calculation against the
FCCH, which is always active. The variance is probably just noise.

> B) I want to wideband capture for example 125 ARFCN. It needs 25MHz
> bandwidth which USRP N210 can handle and stream it easily. Even AFAIK I can
> double this number and capture 250 ARFCN using single N210 (50MHz, in
> USRPN210 data sheet it says it's capable of streaming 50MHz wide signals).

To capture 50MHz you need to 8-bit samples to avoid saturating the
Ethernet bus. So yes it's possible, though I'm not sure about the
current state of device or API support for the feature.

> How can I wideband capture 125 ARFCNs? I tried to do it using:
> ./uhd_rx_cfile.py -f `arfcncalc -a 512 -b 1800 -d` --samp-rate=25000000 -N
> 200000000 -g 70 b1.cfile
>
> What I understood and decided to write such command above:
>
> B-1) arfcncalc calculates frequency of first GSM1800 channel (512 ARFCN)
> which is start point (in above command)
> B-2) Sampling Rate is the bandwidth I want to capture, in our case it's
> 25MHz means 125 ARFCN which each ARFCN has 200kHz bandwidth
> B-3) 200M samples will be received (-N parameter)
> B-4) Gain value is 70, means it will boost antennas to maximum power to
> receive signals, I think USRPN210 max. gain is 80
> B-5) My decimation rate here using 25M sampling rate and USRP N210 which has
> 100MHz ADC, will be 4. So if I decided to read cfile I have to use 4 as
> decimation rate.

You want the centre frequency of the spectrum you want to capture -
not the start point. Also, the maximum gain value will also vary
depending on the daughterboard. Otherwise, you are correct.

> C) How can I seperate and process 200khz by 200khz channels in wideband
> captured file?

The brute force approach is to individually frequency translate each
channel down to baseband, low-pass filter, and perform sample rate
conversion. The more efficient method it to construct a multirate
channelizer. GNU Radio has blocks for either approach, though
construction may not be straightforward.

  Thomas
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