Support for new SDR devices

[Sylvain Munaut]

Hi,


> What are the plans to expand support for new SDR devices?

I don't think there is any.

Support for a given SDR pretty much needs two parts :
 - Someone to write initial support for it in good enough shape and
submit it for inclusion.
   That can either be the vendor, a user, or someone contracted by
someone else to write it.

   USRP1 support comes from the root of OpenBTS code. UHD device
support was AFAIR initially written by Tom Tsou when he was working
for Ettus. Lime Support was a first patch from Fairwaves and then
improved and merged into mainline by Sysmocom. I know Lime themselves
have at least sponsored some hardware to various devs.

 - Then someone has to maintain that driver and test it works. Once
merged, it'll probably be auto tested that it builds as part of
regression testing, but it won't be tested that it actually works.
   But for testing it works, someone with access to the hardware will
need to continuously test it and make sure it doesn't get broken.
   AFAIR Sysmocom has some automated testing with real hardware but
obviously they only do that with hardware that they have and have an
interest in maintaining.


> When I check the contents of osmo-trx/Transceiver52M/device/ on the git master I see the supported lms, uhd and usrp1 devices. For example the XTRX SDR was presented at OsmoDevCon 2018. I expected it to be included in the master soon. At this point I see its addition in the fairwaves / libxtrx-wip branch from 2018. That doesn't give me much encouragement for my next question.
> Would it be possible to add support for PCIe SDR from Amarisoft?

Probably ... see above.

If you write a patch that works and can maintain support for it over
time, that'll be a nice inclusion in osmo-trx.


Cheers,

    Sylvain