Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] quadrature_demod losing weak signals

[Alexandru Csete]

On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 2:50 AM, Kevin Reid <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> This seems like a bug, but I want to check first that I'm not having 
> unreasonable expectations. I'm using GNU Radio 3.7.2.
>
> If the amplitude of the input to quadrature_demod_cf is less than about 
> 10^(-2.23), then the output samples are zero instead of the demodulated 
> signal.
>
> Since such an exponent is well within the range for (complex) single-float 
> samples, this seems like a problem with the arithmetic used by 
> quadrature_demod.
>
> I noticed it because my analog FM receiver would produce complete silence 
> instead of static, despite not having any squelch enabled; unfortunately, it 
> also produces silence on weak signals that would otherwise be intelligible. I 
> have a notion that this did not occur in older GNU Radio versions (e.g. 3.6) 
> but I'm not in a good position to test exactly where the problem might have 
> been introduced.
>
> I've attached a GRC flowgraph for experimenting with the behavior, and a 
> screenshot of what the demodulated output looks like just at the threshold of 
> failure (the signal is 200 samples per cycle).
>
>

I tried your grc file and the scope sink shows a perfect sinewave
here. So maybe it is a voilk issue or the gr::fast_atan2f on your
parchitecture. Mine was using avx_64_mmx_orc

Alex