Agile Solutions is Pleased to announce USRP STAR. Yet another addition to GNURADIO

AGILE SOLUTIONS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE USRP STAR. YET ANOTHER
ADDITION TO GNURADIO

USRP STAR is a 2x2 full duplex MIMO Transceiver
System housing complete RF and DAQ subsystems on a single board. Its
architecture is designed for a true MIMO System. It meets the unique
architecture required for MIMO systems which are not part of traditional
MIMO hardware’s using common clock for RF subsystems where a continuous
RF phase tracking is required. Coupled with these benefits it hosts
onboard RF Transceiver subsystems capable of tuning frequencies from
400MHz to 4.4GHz. Applications developed based on USRP1 seamlessly works
with USRP STAR.

USRP STAR is under production. Pre-Reservations are
open.

USRP STAR is available for Low Introductory price of USD 800.

USRP STAR HOSTS

  • Altera Cyclone FPGA 12K
  • Cypress FX2 USB

Quad 12-Bit 64 MSPS ADC

  • Quad 14-bit 128 MSPS DAC

  • 50MHz Lowpass
    filters for each channel at baseband

  • Dual 400MHz to 4.4GHz
    Quadrature Modulators with fine tuning resolution of 1Hz

  • Dual 400MHz
    to 4.4GHz Quadrature De-Modulators with fine tuning resolution of 1Hz

  • LNA’s, Power amplifiers and attenuaors

  • Receiver Sensitivity:
    -115dBm upto 3.8GHz and -95dBm upto 4.4GHz

  • MAX RF Output Power:
    17dBm with upto 25dB Output power control

  • Receiver Sensitivity:
    -115dBm upto 3.8GHz and -95dBm upto 4.4GHz

  • Receiver Noise figure:
    6-8 dB

For more details and enquiries please visit
www.agile-sdr-solutions.com.

Regards

Agile Solutions

On 04/16/2011 05:10 AM, [email protected] wrote:

phase tracking is required. Coupled with these benefits it hosts

* Dual 400MHz to 4.4GHz Quadrature Modulators with fine tuning

Regards

Agile Solutions


Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
[email protected]
Discuss-gnuradio Info Page
Does this have independent LOs, or does it use a common LO for both
channels?

Hi Marcus,

Welcome to Agile Solutions.

Yes, it uses both common
clock and common LO. Theres no phase tracking required due to common LO
with cycle slip. This is main requirement for MIMO systems for Space
Time(STBC) and Space Frequency(SFBC) Codes.

Although, diversity only
systems needs only common clock. Either TX or RX. There were fundamental
issues when we used USRP1 to detect this problem. We had extensive
analysis and solid theoretical analysis to prove this. Although this
analysis and material is not property of Agile Solutions, we would not
like to comment more on this.

In principle, MIMO systems need strict
phase relations between antenna’s to work.

Particularly antenna phase
relations are closely related to antenna correlation parameters.

Our
primary goal is to help people adopt low cost SDR solution(like USRP)
which empowers our world for better wireless solution. Our effort is to
make improvement every day and contribute more as far possible.

We
know your question was straight to know in particular to LO. We intended
to add more information so that people visiting at GNURADIO may benefit
with this information.

Best Regards

Agile Solutions

On Sat, 16 Apr
2011 13:06:06 -0400, “Marcus D. Leech” wrote: On 04/16/2011 05:10 AM,
[email protected] [1] wrote:

AGILE SOLUTIONS IS PLEASED TO
ANNOUNCE USRP STAR. YET ANOTHER ADDITION TO GNURADIO

USRP STAR is a
2x2 full duplex MIMO Transceiver System housing complete RF and DAQ
subsystems on a single board. Its architecture is designed for a true
MIMO System. It meets the unique architecture required for MIMO systems
which are not part of traditional MIMO hardware’s using common clock for
RF subsystems where a continuous RF phase tracking is required. Coupled
with these benefits it hosts onboard RF Transceiver subsystems capable
of tuning frequencies from 400MHz to 4.4GHz. Applications developed
based on USRP1 seamlessly works with USRP STAR.

USRP STAR is under
production. Pre-Reservations are open.

USRP STAR is available for Low
Introductory price of USD 800.

USRP STAR HOSTS

  • Altera Cyclone
    FPGA 12K
  • Cypress FX2 USB
  • Quad 12-Bit 64 MSPS ADC
  • Quad
    14-bit 128 MSPS DAC
  • 50MHz Lowpass filters for each channel at
    baseband
  • Dual 400MHz to 4.4GHz Quadrature Modulators with fine
    tuning resolution of 1Hz
  • Dual 400MHz to 4.4GHz Quadrature
    De-Modulators with fine tuning resolution of 1Hz
  • LNA’s, Power
    amplifiers and attenuaors
  • Receiver Sensitivity: -115dBm upto 3.8GHz
    and -95dBm upto 4.4GHz
  • MAX RF Output Power: 17dBm with upto 25dB
    Output power control
  • Receiver Sensitivity: -115dBm upto 3.8GHz and
    -95dBm upto 4.4GHz
  • Receiver Noise figure: 6-8 dB

For more details
and enquiries please visit www.agile-sdr-solutions.com [2].

Regards

Agile Solutions _______________________________________________
Discuss-gnuradio mailing list [email protected] [3]
Discuss-gnuradio Info Page [4] Does this
have independent LOs, or does it use a common LO for both channels?

Marcus L.
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy
Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org [5]

Links:

[1]
mailto:[email protected]
[2]

[3]
mailto:[email protected]
[4]
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
[5]

Hello,

I want to know if it’s possible to lock more than one USRP STAR boards
to make 4x4 or 8x8 MIMO system?

Thanks,

Khalid.

Hi Marcus,

Welcome to Agile Solutions.

Yes, it uses both common
clock and common LO. Theres no phase tracking required due to common LO
with cycle slip. This is main requirement for MIMO systems for Space
Time(STBC) and Space Frequency(SFBC) Codes.

Although, diversity only
systems needs only common clock. Either TX or RX. There were fundamental
issues when we used USRP1 to detect this problem. We had extensive
analysis and solid theoretical analysis to prove this. Although this
analysis and material is not property of Agile Solutions, we would not
like to comment more on this.

In principle, MIMO systems need strict
phase relations between antenna’s to work.

Particularly antenna phase
relations are closely related to antenna correlation parameters.

Our
primary goal is to help people adopt low cost SDR solution(like USRP)
which empowers our world for better wireless solution. Our effort is to
make improvement every day and contribute more as far possible.

We
know your question was straight to know in particular to LO. We intended
to add more information so that people visiting at GNURADIO may benefit
with this information.

Best Regards

Agile Solutions

On 04/16/2011 11:15 AM, [email protected] wrote:

MIMO systems for Space Time(STBC) and Space Frequency(SFBC) Codes.

Although, diversity only systems needs only common clock. Either TX or
RX. There were fundamental issues when we used USRP1 to detect this
problem. We had extensive analysis and solid theoretical analysis to
prove this. Although this analysis and material is not property of Agile
Solutions, we would not like to comment more on this.

Dear Mr. Agile Solutions,

You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of MIMO systems in
general, and of the design and function of the USRP in particular. The
USRP1 (as well as all of our other products) is fully MIMO capable. It
does not suffer from cycle slips, and all oscillators are fully coherent
so the phases “track”.

Many papers have been written by people using USRPs for MIMO, including
with STBC and SFBC, as well as phased arrays. For example, a 30-second
search on Google finds this one right away:

http://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~hyousefi/publ/sdrMC08.pdf

Matt E.
President, Ettus R. LLC

On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 23:09:15 -0700, Matt E. [email protected] wrote:

required due to common LO with cycle slip. This is main requirement for

search on Google finds this one right away:

http://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~hyousefi/publ/sdrMC08.pdf

Matt E.
President, Ettus R. LLC

Dear Matt,

We do not have any fundamental misunderstanding of MIMO systems.
Further, there are fundamental drawbacks using common clock for multiple
LO’s used for achieving phase coherency.

Should you need for more understandings of MIMO systems, below are the
leading Test and Measurement companies. Please check this post from
NI http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/pub/p/id/1001
and AGILENT
Keysight RFMW 404 Error Page

USRP STAR meets all the design requirements for a true MIMO system. A
host of MIMO transmitter and receiver examples we will be posting soon.
These will be plug and play. People can use these examples to build
their system.

We went through this published article you sent to us for review

We didn’t see anything particular to STBC/SFBC. For a beamformong
system phase coherence is the fundamental requirement. By varying
phase(weighting the antenna co-efficient) we can steer the beam. In
USRP1/2/200/210 there is no guarantee of the phase reference every time
you send the packets for transmitting or receiving. Every packet
transmission they start with arbitrary phase. So every time the beam
will be switching in arbitrarily. Particularly transmitter DAC doesn’t
have control over the phase plus deviation in the LO phase lock with
track length of the common clock. And for for a phased array system,
DOA(Direction of arrival) depends on the phase reference of the system.
So every time the phase reference needs o be tracked in the algorithm to
know actual DOA. For a diversity transmitter and diversity receiver
employing MRC would only be realized with USRP1 system as per our
understanding.

We would like to know if USRP1 is capable of these things and how ?

Although we haven’t come across any projects with USRP1 for successful
testing for STBC and SFBC codes.
If any team or individual has published this work, we would be happy to
check that part.

To verify from our end we took IQ samples for 2x2 Almouti scheme from
Agilent-VSA example files.
We have then transmitted and received these IQ samples via
USRP1+RFX2400. Transmission and reception done at 1MSPS with 4x
interpolation.
Received IQ samples when loaded into VSA for analysis, it failed to
demodulate and decode. We have used Agilent VSA for years now and we
consider it as a golden reference for demodulation and decoding.

We respect your timely suggestions and advice.

Thank you.

Although we haven’t come across any projects with USRP1 for successful
testing for STBC and SFBC codes.
If any team or individual has published this work, we would be happy to
check that part.

The Hydra project (http://netlab.ece.utexas.edu/hydra/) has space-time
block
codes as defined in the IEEE 802.11n standard, along with spatial
multiplexing. We’ve successfully tested these using the USRP1 in 2x2
systems.

Steve


Steven Peters
Chief Executive Officer
Kuma Signals, LLC
5926 Balcones Dr. Ste. 230
Austin, TX, 78731
512-879-6384

On 04/18/2011 10:13 AM, [email protected] wrote:

We went through this published article you sent to us for review
http://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~hyousefi/publ/sdrMC08.pdf

We didn’t see anything particular to STBC/SFBC.

For a beamformong
system phase coherence is the fundamental requirement. By varying
phase(weighting the antenna co-efficient) we can steer the beam. In
USRP1/2/200/210 there is no guarantee of the phase reference every time
you send the packets for transmitting or receiving. Every packet
transmission they start with arbitrary phase.

That is fundamentally incorrect. Every packet will NOT start with
arbitrary phase. All of our systems have been used for beamforming.
All beamforming systems need calibration and the USRP is no different.
Here are some examples:

So every time the beam
will be switching in arbitrarily. Particularly transmitter DAC doesn’t
have control over the phase plus deviation in the LO phase lock with
track length of the common clock. And for for a phased array system,
DOA(Direction of arrival) depends on the phase reference of the system.
So every time the phase reference needs o be tracked in the algorithm to
know actual DOA. For a diversity transmitter and diversity receiver
employing MRC would only be realized with USRP1 system as per our
understanding.

That is incorrect. The USRP will maintain a constant phase relationship
between antennas for as long as you leave it running.

We would like to know if USRP1 is capable of these things and how ?

Yes. I have answered the question of how to do this many times on this
mailing list over the years.

Although we haven’t come across any projects with USRP1 for successful
testing for STBC and SFBC codes.
If any team or individual has published this work, we would be happy to
check that part.

Steve answered that for you, and you can find a lot more at the link I
sent above.

To verify from our end we took IQ samples for 2x2 Almouti scheme from
Agilent-VSA example files.
We have then transmitted and received these IQ samples via
USRP1+RFX2400. Transmission and reception done at 1MSPS with 4x
interpolation.
Received IQ samples when loaded into VSA for analysis, it failed to
demodulate and decode. We have used Agilent VSA for years now and we
consider it as a golden reference for demodulation and decoding.

We respect your timely suggestions and advice.

Tom and I wrote Alamouti OFDM code and used it on USRPs in my office.
You can find some other people who did the same here:

Matt E.

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:33:31 -0500, Steve P. wrote:

Although
we haven’t come across any projects with USRP1 for successful
testing
for STBC and SFBC codes.
If any team or individual has published this
work, we would be happy to
check that part.

The Hydra project
(http://netlab.ece.utexas.edu/hydra/ [1]) has space-time block codes as
defined in the IEEE 802.11n standard, along with spatial multiplexing.
We’ve successfully tested these using the USRP1 in 2x2
systems.

Steve


Steven Peters
Chief Executive Officer
Kuma Signals,
LLC
5926 Balcones Dr. Ste. 230
Austin, TX,
78731
512-879-6384
www.kumasignals.com [2]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for
your update. We couldn’t find anything on STBC/SFBC with hydra project.
We are interested to know in particular what has been aim of this
project and what has been demonstrated.

We have failed to test USRP1
for this purpose(testing for STBC and SFBC for MIMO). Can you confirm us
with the reports for this. This would help everyone in GNURADIO
community.

Regards

Agile Solutions

Links:

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:17:22 -0700, Matt E. [email protected] wrote:

phase(weighting the antenna co-efficient) we can steer the beam. In

That is incorrect. The USRP will maintain a constant phase relationship

check that part.
demodulate and decode. We have used Agilent VSA for years now and we
consider it as a golden reference for demodulation and decoding.

We respect your timely suggestions and advice.

Tom and I wrote Alamouti OFDM code and used it on USRPs in my office.
You can find some other people who did the same here:

LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You

Matt E.

Dear Matt,

We honestly went through every material in search on Google but we
couldn’t locate a single article published successful testing for
STBC/SFBC.

For whatever reason, we would like to know, if you can confirm on this
with your lab setup ?
We have done considerable experimental work on this. And we are certain
with the results we have have found.
We would encourage this exploration in best interest of all from your
end.

Thank you.

On 04/18/2011 02:09 AM, Matt E. wrote:

required due to common LO with cycle slip. This is main requirement for
MIMO systems for Space Time(STBC) and Space Frequency(SFBC) Codes.

Although, diversity only systems needs only common clock. Either TX or
RX. There were fundamental issues when we used USRP1 to detect this
problem. We had extensive analysis and solid theoretical analysis to
prove this. Although this analysis and material is not property of Agile
Solutions, we would not like to comment more on this.

If you cannot comment on this, could you point us at a publication that
describes the analysis so we can all understand the fundamental issue
you refer to?

Philip

As a user and would be developer on the gnuradio list it’s always
exciting to hear about the availability for new products which can be
used with gnuradio, such as the FUNcube dongle and the work Alex did to
support it and the Agile solution platform. Product developer support
for users on this listserv has been instrumental to the success of GNU
Radio and the mutual respect between the product developers has always
kept this listserv focused on productivity.

If a new product is better is thought to be suited than an older product
for specific applications, I would hope to see a thorough discussion and
analysis in literature, for example the Wireless Innovation Forum is an
excellent venue for such work, versus an email. An email discussion on
this subject can seem like a marketing tool which I’m sure is not the
actual goal.

This is more of a user perspective and I think the more key developers
would agree on this expectation from the listserv.

al fayez

We have done considerable experimental work on this. And we are certain
with the results we have have found.
We would encourage this exploration in best interest of all from your
end.

Thank you.

Dear Mr. Solutions,

Mr. Solutions = Akash Kosgi, Lakshmamma Layout, Banaswadi, Bangalore,
560043, India.

-Jeff

On 04/19/2011 01:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:

with the results we have have found.
We would encourage this exploration in best interest of all from your
end.

Thank you.

Dear Mr. Solutions,

All USRP systems can do STBC, SFBC, spatial multiplexing, etc. I’ve
said it multiple times and pointed you to multiple sources. Steve
Peters told you he and the Hydra team at UT have done it. I have seen
it done. I have done it myself. Our customers have been doing it for 6
years now. The WARP boards from Rice do it in the exact same way.
Millions of WiFi systems do it the same way.

Page 4, section 4 of the following paper says the same thing:

"Our experiments rely on a MANET testbed in
which each test node consists of a host PC and a USRP
motherboard hosting a pair of frontend RF daughter boards.
Since each daughter board is attached to a single antenna,
each MANET node is equipped with a pair of antennas. When
transmitting, each MANET node utilizes Space-Time Block
Coding (STBC) method of [23]. "

I don’t know what more I could possibly say. No matter how many times
you ask the question, the answer will always be the same. Just because
you couldn’t get it to work doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Matt E.

On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:12:34 -0500 (CDT), “Jeff B.”
[email protected] wrote:

We have done considerable experimental work on this. And we are certain
560043, India.

Coding (STBC) method of [23]. "

I don’t know what more I could possibly say. No matter how many times
you ask the question, the answer will always be the same. Just because
you couldn’t get it to work doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Matt E.

Dear Mr. Research,

This sounds odd if you meant it to be 2x2 Alamouti scheme.

“When transmitting, each MANET node utilizes Space-Time Block Coding
(STBC) method of [23].”
“When receiving, it utilizes Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC).”

STBC and MRC are two different methods. If such an article is
published, then it is to reviewed to its contents with right experts.
A simple signal processing math would be sufficient to understand
Space/Time/Frequency diversities.

Akash Kosgi