1 Jun
2011
1 Jun
'11
11:19 a.m.
Hi!
2011/5/29 Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org>rg>:
Hi!
For those interested, I've taken apart the case and did some
investigation how the FCDP hardware architecture looks like.
The results are available at
http://tetra.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/Funcube_Dongle
That's quite interesting as the E4000 seems to handle all the analog
stuff without external LNA, etc.
Simplifies things a lot.
It seems the silicon tuner actually is intended for
DVB-T, thus the
bandwidth it can down-convert is _much_ higher. However, the audio
codec that they use can only do 96kHz.
That's actually really sad. I wish they had used something with higher
ADC rate. But it seems like even high-end audio codecs never get you
beyond 196/216 kHz - still insufficient for e.g. GSM.
I wasn't able to find the output bandwidth of the E4000 somewhere on
the website. Do you have an idea of the bw?
Still, gluing a faster dual-ADC plus hi-speed USB IF to the tuner
shouldn't be that much of a problem.
It seems though, the E4000 can only be obtained from Elonics. No luck
with digikey, R+S, farnell...
Maybe we should try to ask Elonics if they'd be willing to provide
some samples+datasheet and the DVB-T reference design.
If we somehow could put an open design together, I guess we could find
someone to build+sell larger quantities.
I really would be interested in such a dongle w/ faster ADCs.
What do you think?
Regards,
Benedikt / hunz