[Discuss-gnuradio] Multiple applications using same A/D converter?

[David Nesting]

I'm a long-time lurker here and one of the things I'm interested in is
the ability for more than one application to access (and demodulate,
independently) from the same A/D converter.

>From all of the code I've studied, each application seems like it takes
exclusive control of the ADC for its specific task (even the sample that
demodulates two FM broadcasts at once).  Is it likely that a current or
future GNUradio implementation might allow some additional flexibility
here?  If I use an expensive ADC, I'd like to only have to buy one of
them and start up a separate process for each type of demodulation I wish
to perform (perhaps piping the results to speakers/video terminals in
other locations at the request of users, or delivered on-demand through
a SIP-negotiated network session).  This way I don't have to devote the
ADC to one task.  I can be decoding an ATSC broadcast in one process
and decide I want to decode the closed-caption messages from another.
And maybe 24x7, I'm listening on WWV and providing time synchronization
to the network, independent of other "real" tasks that are working with
other areas of the spectrum.

This would more or less require a "master" process doing the tuning
and ADC work and managing the flow of data to each slave performing
the demodulation.  These slaves could attach or detach in any number or
fashion to the master, subject to available CPU horsepower.

(And actually, taking this a step further, maybe this "master" could
conceivably juggle between multiple A/D converters (maybe on different
systems?), letting people take advantage of a large number of spare
sound cards and aggregate the sampling power of each.  But I might be
diving a little too far into fantasy here.)

Comments?

David

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