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Re: Best way to test basic operation of BladeRFx40

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 6:21 pm
by rtucker
Greetings!

We have a walk-through of how to verify basic functionality at: https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF/wiki/G ... -Operation

My usual "smoke test" is to transmit /dev/urandom, which will produce a nice big blob around the center frequency. Something like this will produce a 5 MHz wide blob around 2.4 GHz, at about 0 dBm:

Code: Select all

set samplerate tx 5M
set frequency tx 2.4G
set gain tx 60
tx config file=/dev/urandom repeat=0
tx start
I hope this is useful! If this doesn't work, please reply back with the output of the 'print' command so that we can verify that all the settings are right.

Thanks :)

Re: Best way to test basic operation of BladeRFx40

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 7:22 pm
by rtucker
Yup, this should work!

Re: Best way to test basic operation of BladeRFx40

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 1:47 pm
by rtucker
The sample rate must be greater than your expected signal bandwidth, and in general, it's nice if it is an integer multiple of the symbol/chip rate. For example, W-CDMA/UMTS uses a chip rate of 3.84 Mchips/sec for an occupied bandwidth of 5 MHz, so 7.68 Msamples/sec is the minimum I'd use.

For transmit power, the rule that I usually go by is to use the minimum transmitter power necessary to carry out the desired communications (see also FCC ยง97.313(a)). Start quite low, and bump up if required.

For what it's worth, 902-928 MHz is (among other things) an amateur radio frequency band, so if you have an amateur radio license (and can meet the various other requirements), transmit power is much less of a concern.