nuand bladerf Overview

Transcription

1 nuand bladerf Overview Ryan Tucker W2XH September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This PDF was published to on September 16, 2013.

2 Outline SDR Introduction bladerf in a Nutshell Hardware Architecture Software Architecture In The Works Demonstration September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 2

3 SDR Introduction September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 3

4 Software-Defined Radio? Wikipedia definition: A radio communications system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators / demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system. September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 4

5 SDR Applications Military JTRS Commercial Femtocells Whitespace radios Amateur FlexRadio DVB-T USB (RTL2834U) QtRadio / glsdr September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 5

6 Trends IC manufacturers developing all-in-one RF transceivers Digital-to-RF & RF-to-Digital converters FPGA companies releasing products with DSP blocks, hard ARM processor cores, more RAM, etc September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 6

7 Trends Wider bandwidths Higher sample Costs go down Capabilities increase rates Faster pipes September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 7

8 bladerf in a Nutshell September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 8

9 The bladerf September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 9

10 The bladerf Professional Quality, Amateur Price Development was funded via Kickstarter 30 days, 501 backers, $191,422 pledged of $100,000 goal Launched by a group of software, hardware, and RF engineers with years of industry experience September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 10

11 Basic Specs 300 MHz to 3800 MHz 28 MHz bandwidth USB 3.0 interface September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 11

12 bladerf Pricing $420 or $650 Two FPGA sizes: 40 kle, 115 kle GPIO Expansion Board: $50 HF/VHF Transverter: $150 September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 12

13 Hardware Architecture September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 13

14 bladerf System September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 14

15 bladerf System RF FX3 USB FPGA September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 15

16 Schematic September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 16

17 RF Components September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 17

18 RF Components RF Switch Baluns RX RF Transceiver IC TX September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 18

19 RF Components One IC contains the LNA, PA driver, RX/TX mixers, RX/TX filters, synthesizers, RX gain control, TX power control, DAC and ADC Instant RF: Just add baluns September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 19

20 RX Schematic September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 20

21 LMS6002D Block Diagram September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 21

22 RF Specifications From the Lime Micro LMS6002D datasheet: Frequency range: 300 to 3800 MHz Baseband bandwidth: 0.75 to 14 MHz Frequency resolution: 2.4 Hz TX supply current (max gain): 280 ma RX supply current (max gain): 220 ma TX output power (CW): 6 dbm RX damage power: 23 dbm RX LNA1 Frequency range: 0.3 to 2.8 GHz Noise figure: 3.5 db at 0.95 GHz RX LNA2 Frequency range: 1.5 to 3.8 GHz Noise figure: 5.5 db at 1.95 GHz DAC/ADC 12-bit I/Q multiplex, 40 MHz ENOB (Effective Number of Bits): 10 bits September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 22

23 Altera Cyclone IV FPGA September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 23

24 Altera Cyclone IV FPGA At the heart of the bladerf Interfaces to: FX3 Microcontroller LMS6002D Transceiver Si5338 clock generator VCTCXO trim DAC GPIO expansion header NMEA input from GPS (with 1 pps input) Reference clock input Embedded memory, hard multipliers, DSP capability,... September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 24

25 Cypress FX3 Microcontroller September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 25

26 Cypress FX3 Microcontroller Streams data to and from the FPGA via GPIF II, a 100 MHz 32-bit interface Streams data to and from the host via USB 3.0, at up to 5 Gb/s! September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 26

27 Software Architecture September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 27

28 Three Major Components FPGA Orchestrate entire platform FX3 Interface host computer to FPGA Program the FPGA on power-up (soon) Host libraries Allow user applications to talk to bladerf September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 28

29 Some Developers Damiano Bolla: si5338 sample rate readback, misc. bugfixes Robert Ghilduta: Project maintainer Mike Kershaw: CLI bug fixes Brian Padalino: Project maintainer Marco Schwan: OSX build fixes Jon Szymaniak: Project maintainer Ryan Tucker: Documentation, FPGA build automation September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 29

30 Github Stats As of Sep 11 (commit 3d ): 423 commits 12 contributors 61% C, 23% VHDL, 9% Verilog, 6% Tcl, 1% Other 26 open issues, 69 closed issues September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 30

31 Github Stats September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 31

32 Github Stats Not a working-hours project! September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 32

33 Github Stats September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 33

34 Organization firmware_common Common source and headers between firmware and host #defines, structs, etc... fx3_firmware Cypress FX3 firmware Sets up USB 3.0 interfaces: Cyclone IV FPGA loader RF link with LMS6002D via FPGA Control interface (SPI, Si5338 programming, VCTCXO,...) hdl Source HDL and build scripts for IP blocks and platform top-levels Mix-and-match various IP and capabilities to do what you want Instantiates a Nios II for SPI control host Libraries and drivers for accessing the bladerf Uses libusb for Linux/OSX/Windows libbladerf is cross-platform, and will also work on the Nios II for headless use September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 34

35 Building Firmware: Cypress FX3 SDK Free download FPGA: Altera Quartus II Web Edition is free Host: Your usual build chain September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 35

36 Not Building Firmware and FPGA images available for download Official releases Unofficial instant builds September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 36

37 Third-Party Applications GNURadio De facto SDR standard Using gr-osmosdr module Compile/Install libbladerf, then use the build-gnuradio script September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 37

38 Third-Party Applications OpenBTS Port in progress Software-based GSM access point September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 38

39 In the Works September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 39

40 To do: urgent Improve the software USB flakiness Broken demos Documentation Tutorials September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 40

41 Planned Add-On HF/VHF Transverter... a block up-down converter that greatly expands the bladerf s lower frequency range. The expansion board s targeted high fidelity frequency is 50 MHz, however the transverter can be tuned as low as 10 MHz, making the platform suitable for HF/VHF applications. September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 41

42 Demonstration September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 42

43 More Information #bladerf on irc.freenode.net Media Credits: R. Tucker (all bladerf photos), nuand LLC (Schematic, RX Schematic), Lime Micro (LMS6002D Block Diagram), github (Github Stats) Thanks: Brian Padalino, David Taubman, Dr. Greg Pettis, Dawn Lepard KC2VJU September 13, 2013 Rochester VHF Group 43