Hi Martin,
This is a follow up on my earlier email. I am still having issues with
getting two N200’s to work together.
First, please find a short answer to your questions.
Out of curiousity, do you have a MIMO cable and are willing to test that?
No, I do not have a MIMO cable.
You’re saying you get 2 channels per LFRX, correct? Also, are you
attenuating the signal?
Yes, I tried both 2 (i.e., A:A, A:B) and 1 (i.e, A:AB). The signal is
attenuated by a factor of four 'cuz I’m using two T’s each with two
outputs.
Just to confirm: You’re setting both clock and time sources to
external?
Yes.
I initially thought the issue has to do with syncing, but it seems that
it
is not due to syncing per se (?!)
A quick recap. One N200 acts as a single-channel Tx (i.e., A:AB) and a
two-channel Rx (i.e., A:A and A:B). The other N200 only acts as a
two-channel Rx (i.e., A:A and A:B).
I am using two T’s to split my Tx signal into four signals and I am
feeding those to the Rx’s.
[i.e., my Rx signal is attenuated by a factor of 4].
In GRC, I always use an USRP sink that is properly configured for the Tx
AB
channel.
At the Rx side, for the sake of testing, I tried multiple configurations
as
follows.
First, I only considered one N200 (i.e., a single motherboard) at a
time,
and I used a source as above. When I do so, either I apply external
sync
and clock or not, I am able to perfectly receive my signal. This test
was
successful when I fed-in the source with either the two Rx channels from
the first or the second N200, separately.
Second, I used one single source with two motherboards and four Rx
channels. I tested this* with and without sync/clocking signals*. In
both
cases, I get this error message:
Using Volk machine: sse4_a_64_orc
thread[thread-per-block[4]: <block gr uhd usrp source (1)>]:
RuntimeError: fifo ctrl timed out looking for acks
Please note that, despite this message, the GRC program looks as if it
is
running, and the GUI shows me the output from the scope (i.e., scope is
just placed before the USRP Tx sink). However, the output from the
scopes
after the Rx USRP is null for the four channels.
[For Rx’s with a single source, I also tried a single-channel from the
two
motherboards (i.e., A:AB) without any success].
Checking the system monitor on my computer confirms that one USRP is
transmitting all the time while no receive/incoming traffic whatsoever.
Besides this, I tried various diagnostics. I thought that the issue may
has
to do with the Ethernet controller/card on my computer, and that it may
be
dropping/delaying some packets. Hence, I ‘unmanaged’ the Ethernet
connections, and I applied static configuration. I also tried to disable
some options in the network driver such as autoneg, adaptive, coalesce,
etc., without any success.
Please find below some diagnoses that may give some clues on the FIFO
ACK
error,
T-UD2H:~$ sudo ethtool --show-coalesce eth4
Coalesce parameters for eth4:
Adaptive RX: off TX: off
stats-block-usecs: 0
sample-interval: 0
pkt-rate-low: 0
pkt-rate-high: 0
rx-usecs: 20
rx-frames: 5
rx-usecs-irq: 0
rx-frames-irq: 5
tx-usecs: 72
tx-frames: 53
tx-usecs-irq: 0
tx-frames-irq: 5
rx-usecs-low: 0
rx-frame-low: 0
tx-usecs-low: 0
tx-frame-low: 0
rx-usecs-high: 0
rx-frame-high: 0
tx-usecs-high: 0
tx-frame-high: 0
T-UD2H:/etc/network$ sudo ethtool --show-coalesce eth3
Coalesce parameters for eth3:
Adaptive RX: off TX: off
stats-block-usecs: 0
sample-interval: 0
pkt-rate-low: 0
pkt-rate-high: 0
rx-usecs: 20
rx-frames: 5
rx-usecs-irq: 0
rx-frames-irq: 5
tx-usecs: 72
tx-frames: 53
tx-usecs-irq: 0
tx-frames-irq: 5
rx-usecs-low: 0
rx-frame-low: 0
tx-usecs-low: 0
tx-frame-low: 0
rx-usecs-high: 0
rx-frame-high: 0
tx-usecs-high: 0
tx-frame-high: 0
T-UD2H:/etc/network$ ifconfig -a eth4
eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr REMOVED
inet addr:192.168.10.1 Bcast:192.168.10.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: REMOVED_by_KE Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:118227 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:733915 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:8366882 (8.3 MB) TX bytes:930252111 (930.2 MB)
Interrupt:19
GA-MA785GMT-UD2H:/etc/network$ ifconfig -a eth3
eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr REMOVED
inet addr:192.168.20.1 Bcast:192.168.20.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: REMOVED_by_KE Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:40807 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11811 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3100954 (3.1 MB) TX bytes:1076135 (1.0 MB)
Interrupt:18
We also sucessfuly upgraded the firmware for both the USRPs. We noticed
that (i.e., also shown form the stickers on the back of each device) one
N200 is rev 2.0 and the other is rev 4.0. Could that be the cause of the
problem?
I will appreciate any help on fixing this issue.
Thank you in advance.
Khalid