NMT-450 - partial success

This is merely a historical archive of years 2008-2021, before the migration to mailman3.

A maintained and still updated list archive can be found at https://lists.osmocom.org/hyperkitty/list/OpenBSC@lists.osmocom.org/.

Sipos Csaba dchardware at gmail.com
Mon Oct 26 15:08:01 UTC 2020


Hi Ralph,

I attached the patch for the country specific settings for Hungary, you can
apply it against "master" . TAs are not yet verified, but the phone goes
"green" with all TAs from 1 to 15. The RF part and country code are
verified.

> One thing, maybe your MCR has drifted, due to ageing?!

Well, that was my first impression too, as if you look at my picture (
http://www.imagebam.com/image/d17e881357285965 ) you will see that the
center of the downlink and uplink transmissions are not exactly 10MHz
apart, they have a couple kHz drift. On the picture the two markers are
indicating the nominal frequency of the channel. As you can see the uplink
burst is actually closer to the nominal frequency, compared to the
downlink. It is not in the standard (or I was not able to find it, in
general the RF spec is not very detailed...), so I am not sure if the SDRs
downlink signal is off, and the phone is correct or the other way around.
Although it sure looks like a low layer fault, as the NMT network is not
even detecting is as bad or incorrect frames.

I did a loopback test with a jumper between the TX and RX of the SDR and
that seemed to work (frame level and frame quality were 90+%). On the other
hand if the local oscillator would be off, the phone would not be able to
lock on the DL signal as well. I have no high precision counter at home,
but with a relatively primitive multimeter I was able to measure 12.7999MHz
on the 12.8MHz local oscillator. And both identical phones behave the same.

The question is if I can somehow offset the uplink frequency on the SDR
side or via config/source modification to remove this couple kHz drift?

If someone has seen a lot of these signals and can take a look at the image
above, would be lovely to hear if any of the signals are off.

I will also get another more "modern" phone hopefully soon, so I can try
with that.

Regards,
Csaba

Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras <ralph at schmid.xxx> ezt írta (időpont: 2020. okt.
26., H, 15:33):

> Hi Chaba,
>
>
>
> I have a Nokia handheld phone from Hungary, I can try with your settings
> and let you know.
>
>
>
> Andreas seems to be difficult to reach these days, I found the same :/
>
>
> With best regards
>
>
> Ralph.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* OpenBSC [mailto:openbsc-bounces at lists.osmocom.org] *On Behalf Of *Sipos
> Csaba
> *Sent:* Monday, October 26, 2020 3:16 PM
> *To:* openbsc-request at lists.osmocom.org <openbsc at lists.osmocom.org>
> *Subject:* Fwd: NMT-450 - partial success
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> I know it is a bit off topic, but as osmocom-analog has no dedicated mail
> list and my every attempt to contact Andreas lead to silence, I thought
> this is the closest one to discuss it.
>
>
>
> I try to create an NMT-450 network with Motorola MCR4800XL phones, and a
> LimeSDR-mini. As the phones are locked to "Hungary" using a specific raster
> and a large gap in the middle, first I needed to dig out the details, find
> out the country code and create a patch so at least the phone is willing to
> lock onto the DS signal. I managed to do all that, so now the phone is
> actually able to decode the network and lock onto the signal.
>
>
>
> My issue is with the uplink: when the phone tries Traffic Area update (the
> phone's uplink transmission burts is clearly seen with a spectrum
> analyzer), the network side is not able to detect the uplink burst at all.
> Not even as bad, or incorrectly formatted frame. Andreas has a site which
> describes how to set up the uplink side and do some tests:
>
>
>
> http://osmocom-analog.eversberg.eu/docs/sdr.html
>
>
>
> I followed that guide and when the uplink burst from the phone arrives,
> the RX IQ constellation monitor indicates a correct burst with proper power
> (the burst is nicely round and in the green area). If I try to set up a
> call to the phone using the correct country code and phone number, the
> phone clearly responds to the paging request, as the 3 paging attempt
> generates 3 uplink bursts. Again, with no reception/decoding on the network
> side. Tried with two phones of the same type, the effect is the same.
>
>
>
> I have two questions:
>
>
>
> 1. Where to send patches for the osmocom-analog project?
>
> 2. Does anyone have an idea what can be wrong with my setup?
>
>
>
> One more thing I noticed: compared to the channel frequency used to set
> the NMT network up, the uplink is a couple kHz shifted:
>
>
>
> http://www.imagebam.com/image/d17e881357285965
>
>
>
> As it can be seen, the uplink burst appears 3-4kHz left relative to the
> downlink signal.
>
>
>
> The network is started with the following command:
>
> nmt -k 239 -k 235 -Y HU,1 --limesdr-mini --sdr-rx-gain 20
>
>
>
> Any and all help is appreciated.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Csaba
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/openbsc/attachments/20201026/401af0d5/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 0001-Add-country-specific-settings-for-Hungary.patch
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 1829 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/openbsc/attachments/20201026/401af0d5/attachment.obj>


More information about the OpenBSC mailing list