BladeRF A40 usb cable noise?

[blupastu408w]

Forgive my newbie question, and the issues I'm having may very well be something I'm doing wrong and not a product issue.

I'm using the bladeRF as a learning tool and as a device to test LNA's I build. I bought the bladeRF because it's a better device and is more sensitive than the hackRF is - which may actually be the cause of the issues I'm having.

Generally, I use ADSB data to test how well my homemade lna's work (signal to noise wise). With my hackRF's (multiple) and other SDR's I'm able to get between 30-50 ADSB entries at any point of time throughout the day. With the bladeRF I'm lucky to get 2-3 hits using the same antenna setup (with or without lna, using the same bandwidth/sample rate). Initially I thought that if I used enough bandpass filtering it'd help but it does not. With a filter before AND after the antenna I'm still not getting anywhere near the range or number of ADSB entries as the hackRF.

I've found that if I put my hand on certain parts of the USB cable, the noise floor drops and I'm able to get more ADSB hits. I'm using the cable that came with the bladeRF and have tried a few others with the same results. I've also tried to shield the bladerf by building a pcb enclosure. I tried grounding the bladeRF to the enclosure as well as keeping it isolated (not grounded). Currently it's installed in the acrylic enclosure sold by Nuand. Nothing seems to help.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[robert.ghilduta]

One thing to try is to use a USB3.0 EMI isolator or USB2.0 cable to protect the bladeRF from USB3.0 EMI. Some PCs more than others seem to have inject quite a bit of noise into USB 3.0/3.1.
Another thing to experiment with is to put the bladeRF into manual gain mode, and launch gqrx at 1090MHz to emperically determine what lowers the noise floor of the entire system (PC->bladeRF->antenna).