User:Duggabe

DRAFT REVISION Guided_Tutorial_Hardware_Considerations

Introduction

One of the great strengths of GNU Radio is how easy it is to move from simulation to real-world operation. In this tutorial, we will build on what you have learned so far and create a complete FM radio receiver which you can use to listen to your local FM radio stations. Also we will discuss considerations that come into play when working with real-world radio hardware.

This tutorial is divided into two sections: "Signal Processing" and "Hardware". Various popular hardware devices are shown so that you can build with your available device.

This tutorial can be performed with either GNU Radio (GR) version 3.7 or 3.8 (and later). The Graphical User Interface gnuradio-companion (GRC) is used to create a flowgraph for each section.

Prerequisites

• Our Suggested Reading list
• Tutorials:
  • A brief introduction to GNU Radio, SDR, and DSP
  • Intro to GR usage: GRC and flowgraphs
  • Understanding sample rate

What Will I Need?

Even if you don't have an actual radio to work with, this tutorial is still useful. You can simply use a recording from an actual radio, with nothing done to the data. We have provided a recording, which you can find in the gr-tutorials repository. You can use this in your flowgraph to simulate hardware passing you samples.

This tutorial will be most useful, however, if you have a piece of radio hardware that you can use with GNU Radio. There are a large number of vendors who provide hardware with GNU Radio drivers. They span from very cheap $20 receivers to very high-performance tens-of-thousands-of-dollars systems. See Hardware for additional information.

This tutorial is possible if you have a radio that can receive the broadcast FM band. Most countries allocate between ~87 MHz and ~108 MHz to FM broadcast radio, with some slight variations in that range.