Re: Survey regarding GNU radio usage in amateur radio

[Ralf Gorholt]

Hello Adrian,

here are my answers to your questions:

1) No.

2) I have tried to use it for DVB-T reception with an RTL-SDR stick in
the 70cm band with non standard bandwidths (2 MHz and lower). In
principle, this is possible, but there is a problem in the OFDM symbol
recognition block due to different clocks used by the receiver and
transmitter. This leads sooner or later (seconds to minutes) to
reception loss because the receiver has to re-synchronize again.
Somebody on the list (I don't remember his name by heart, I would have
to search my emails) has made something for ISDB-T but this is not
usable for DVB-T.

3) In my opinion, GNU Radio is a very powerful tool. But, it is only a
tool and a tool that you have to know how to use. Abolutely nothing for
beginners. Mostly nothing is really ready, you have to build what you
need yourself. The GUI is very basic. This is only my personal
impression, I may be wrong. And I don't know PYTHON and at my age, I
don't want to learn yet another programming language.

4) Strong: very powerful and versatile. Weak: different versions of GNU
Radio are available, for Linux and Windows, every one with different
options (available blocks). Sometimes newer versions do not offer all
available blocks. Sometimes you have to compile modules yourself,
something that is difficult when you have to or want to stick to
Windows. I am partially able to do this but many OMs that I know are
not. And lastly, even if Linux was the best system around, people would
still prefer Windows. My impression is that without an always up to date
Windows version GNU Radio will remain something for "nerds".

5) Yes.

Kind regards,

Ralf

Am 14.11.2020 um 21:43 schrieb Elmore Family:
> Adrian,
>
> Here are my answers to your survey;
>
> 1. Yes
> 2. Attempting to provide a complete transceiver for a Softrock/MOBO
> 4. It has a very steep learning curve which will keep the majority of
> hams from utilizing it. However, it's block nature allows RAD which is
> very attractive for SDR development.
> 5. No
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Adrian Musceac
> Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2020 3:11 AM
> To: discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org
> Subject: Survey regarding GNU radio usage in amateur radio
>
> Hello,
>
> I am doing a survey regarding the topic of GNU radio usage in amateur
> radio
> activities.
> This survey is aimed at GNU radio users who are also amateur radio
> operators.
> The result of the survey will be published in an article freely
> available on
> the Internet and may also be translated to other languages for reading by
> other amateur radio operators.
>
> Your contribution to the survey will remain anonymous unless you
> express a
> wish to have author attribution for the answers.
> You should be comfortable with the license of publication which will
> be one of
> Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license or GNU Free Documentation
> license.
> You may reply directly or send me the answers privately. The date
> limit for
> answers is 30 December current year.
>
> I will ask you to respond to the following questions (you may omit
> questions
> where you do not have answers):
>
>
> 1. Are you actively using GNU radio in amateur radio activities?
>
>
> 2. If yes, how are you using GNU radio, please provide some details.
>
> 3. Do you think GNU radio and applications using it solve some
> specific problem
> for amateur operators which is not solved by other free software DSP
> libraries, or, on the contrary, do you think it should implement a
> solution
> that already exists elsewhere?
>
> 4. What would you consider strong and weak points in GNU radio when
> related to
> amateur radio usage?
>
> 5. Is your local amateur radio community generally aware of the
> existence of
> GNU radio?
>
> 6. If you have any authored / co-authored published papers, talk slides,
> seminars etc. related to the topic of this survey, can you provide a
> short
> description and a link if available?
>
> 7. Are you involved in research projects which use amateur radio
> crowd-sourced
> data, and if so, can you provide a short description of the project?
>
> 8. Do you have any suggestions for raising general amateur radio public
> awareness of free software in general and specifically GNU radio?
>
>
> Thanks in advance for answering.
>
> Adrian