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RASDR User Manual

1. 7 Generously provided by OpenMoko This can occur if the EEPROM ID has not been set and may be seen on the pre production RASDR receivers Version 1 7 4 Page 54 of 81 a You may need to re associate the device driver see Chapter 4 b above Figure 43 thru Figure 47 detail the steps you are likely to encounter using the CyControl program Sg USB Control Center Figure 43 CyControl program Firmware update step 1 Sey USB Control Center Figure 44 CyControl program Firmware update step 2 Version 1 7 4 Page 55 of 81 Select file to download xi usb rx img 2 18 2014 12 08 AM Disc Image Recent Places Desktop Ld Libraries VA Au Computer Network SS File name usb img ba Files of type Firmware Image files img v Open as read only th Figure 45 Select programming file Firmware update step 5 Fie Program Help te s c di URBStat AbortPipe ResetPpe X GO FH BCypress USB BootProgrammer Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection Figure 46 Firmware Update Success r USB Control Center mfe xj Fie Program Help She Aa fe RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface URBStat AbortPipe ResetPipe X QO F Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection lt DEVICE gt FriendlyName RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Manufacturer SARA Product DigiRed_RX SerialNumber
2. eae Aaa URB Stat AbortPipe ResetPpe X 8 D F RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection Configuration 1 Control endpoint 0x00 Interface 0 CONTROL OUT transfer 0000 20 02 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 CONTROL OUT transfer completed Figure 50 GPIO Write Action part 1 amp gy USB Control Center lol x File Program Help te p 5 ada URBStat AbortPipe ResetPpe X BOF RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection Configuration 1 Control endpoint 0x00 Data to send He amp Interface 0 20 02 00 00 01 CONTROL OUT transfer 0000 20 02 00 00 01 00 00 00 OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 00 0010 00 00 OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO 00 00 00 00 00 0020 00 00 00 OO OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 OO 00 OO OO OO OO OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 CONTROL OUT transfer completed CONTROL IN transfer 0000 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 OO OO OO OO OO OO 00 00 OO OO 00 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 OO OO OO 00 OO OO OO OO 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 OO OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 CONTROL IN transfer complet
3. Available http www setileague org photos wghorn htm Accessed 2015 34 P Shuch SETI Horn of Plenty SETI League Online Available http www setileague org articles horn htm Accessed 2015 35 R W World Horn Antenna Calculator Online Available http www rfwireless world com calculators Horn Antenna Calculator html Accessed 2015 36 R Postprocessing Postprocessing with Python 2015 Online Available https groups yahoo com neo groups RASDR files PostprocessingSoftware 37 NRAO NATIONAL RADIO ASTRONOMY OBSERVATORY 40 FOOT RADIO TELESCOPE OPERATOR S MANUAL 2014 Online Available http www gb nrao edu epo manual pdf 38 Ebay Raltron CO19025 100 000MHz 2014 Online Available www ebay com Version 1 7 4 Page 79 of 81 39 Raltron Through hole clock oscillators 3 state HCMOS compatible Raltron 2014 Online Available http www raltron com products pdfspecs clock_co15 col9 pdf 40 Miltron LFCN 225 Mitron 2014 Online Available http www mitron cn cxchanpin Filters n LFCN 225 pdf 41 Hewlett Packard Silicon Bipolar MMIC 5 GHz 2014 Online Available http www qsl net n9zia omnitracs IAM81008 pdf 42 Minicircuits Plugin High Pass Filter Online Available http www minicircuits com pdfs PHP 100 pdf 43 Nooelec Ham It Up v1 2 RF Upconverter For Software Defined Radio Nooelec 2014 Online Available http www noo
4. Figure 47 Reinsert USB after Firmware update Version 1 7 4 Page 56 of 81 c Firmware Command Set This section describes the command set implemented by the RASDR DigiRED firmware To control various aspects of the DigiRED board the following VENDOR command codes are defined using the following protocol 1 the payload for all packets are fixed at 64 bytes in length 2 every request payload contains a 4 byte header followed by a data block starting at byte 4 64 total bytes 3 every response payload contains a 64 byte data block 4 the first byte of the header is a command code to the DigiRED control program on the FX3 the remaining three bytes are defined according to the command code or ignored as appropriate 5 A sequence of REQUEST OUT VENDOR 0xC1 must always be followed by a RESPONSE IN VENDOR 0xC0 6 A RESPONSE IN shall never be sent before a REQUEST OUT These are the commands that are supported by the firmware CMD FX2 0x40 no operation CMD CFG I2C RD 0x15 read I2C bus Command format src 0 0x15 src 1 I2C address src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 register address Il Performs an I2C transaction with the base address given by src 1 src 2 describes the number of transactions n to perform while src 4 src 4 n 1 are the register to read Upon completion the command will fill the transmit buffer with n values read A subsequent VE
5. Operation of RASDR in Various Radio Astronomy Bands The FCC spectral designations from 3kHz to 30 GHz 15 are shown in Table 1 Table 1 FCC band plan from 3kHz to 30GHz Development of these bands for radio astronomy research is shown in Table 2 It is taken from various sources and contains comments by the authors The Jovian kilometric band is not often considered but it has been observed by Voyager and other space probes and may be a valid radio astronomy band from earth under certain circumstances 16 17 RASDR along with ancillary equipment discussed in this guide has been used from 2MHz 3 8GHz Version 1 7 4 Page 11 of 81 RASDR2 operates in bands 9 10 up to 4 GHz but with additional components the coverage may be considerably extended as will be discussed beginning on page 38 pewmnVEF iOlllfovinkbmese vues orate Jovian VLF 10 11 Jovian kilometric VLF 015 to 025 Solar SolarWind O S 1 second for pulse shape VHF 70 0 05 Seconds bin width VHF 150 Clock Disipline 0 1 Second UHF 322 UHF 406 Continuum VLBI Solar _ Consider Dicke Switching UHF 608 21 cm Hydrogen Galactic doppler 1 4 MHz L Band 1420 Extra Galactic 5 MHz Solar Contininuum L Band 1420 OH spectral galactic doppler 1 6 MHz L Band 1665 1667 OH spectral SETI Band OD Continuum Solar Calibration to NOAA obs Continuum Solar LNB required for RASDR operation above 3800 MHz Methanol Doppler Dopple
6. V i channel Q channel Data rate KB s 15823 Updates per second 30 IQ samples versus 0 2000 S0 i00 i50 200 850 300 350 400 450 S00 SSO 600 650 700 750 800 850 900 350 1000 2000 1000 o 1000 2000 FFT Marker0 F 0 Hz G in ll 6 dB 50 dl a S E RES oa n E T so d 550 Wiz 580 Wiz 070 Wiz 080 Ws 050 Ws O40 Miz 030 Wiz 020 Wr 010 W r 0 00 Wir 10 Ws 0 20 Wr 030 Wiz ONO W r 59 W r O60 Miz 070 Wr 050 WH 050 WH 198 mh Center Offset Frequency Zoom Center KHz 0 Span KHz 2000 Add Mkr RemoveMkr Record FFT 0 FFTs REC SetPwrRef Record PWR MaxHoldFFT Start capturing samples Bw MHz 1 5 X Integrated ADC Power Pwr Span 1 to 1440 Min Stop capturing samples RF Ctr Freq MHz 1420 405000 W Ave Ovr Frames 128 VGAiGaintdB 25 17 B 1 Samps Frame VGA2 Gain dB 30 Integration Time S 1024 10 uf Samp Rate MS S LNA Gain Mode Max gain s 4 APPLY do s 430 440 450 460 470 480 A Figure 22 GUI Start window of the RASDRViewer application Starting in the upper left side the In Phase 1 and Quadrature Q samples are displayed against time To the right there is a chart that displays the phase relationship between the I and Q samples Since a significant spectral line is present the circle is present The circle is generated by sinusoidal content in the sampled data This chart is used mainly to verify the system However it is a useful educationa
7. delimiter CHAR Specify the delimiter character to use default e excel localtime Indicate that csv file has timestamps in RASDRviewer s LocalTime format k CONST calibration CONST Specify the calibration constant for the system 0 0 uncal default 0 0 Perform line by line processing instead of loading entire file s NOTE much slower but tolerates low memory better i into Produce information about a file only do not generate any plots statistics PATH Dump statistical information to a file in comma separated values format default none v verbose Verbose g gui Create interactive PLOTS s N smoothzN Smooth final plot using a sliding window of N points fcenter FC Define the offset for the center frequency in Hz default 0 0 hold Perform a maximum value HOLD during averaging and plot it as a second line bplot If using background file choose whether to plot the background reference in a difffert color default False ptype TYPE Control plot vertical scale linear or log default log atype TYPE Control averaging method linear or log default log format X Y Z Specify the RASDRviewer csv output format to interpret default 1 2 2 The tool is command line driven but can be used with a batch file to set parameters Please experiment with the tool the example data files and settings that produce the type of processing and plotting that is desired The program is distributed as bo
8. signal Ss Oct end Mace Bret eot e Weeks Woe ro dtes edoctus va asd an fe ace aed eed e 40 Figure 29 Example system configuration for H1 detection RASDR hardware is outlined in DING Sepp DPA de AR UE Ata duod p MMOL MAS Nep dM 40 Figure 30 L shows the raw averaged RASDR spectrum center frequency 1420 407 MHz from RA19 DE 7 and R the background spectrum from RA20 DE 7 a rather thin part of the Milky Way The background region was chosen using published maps and the small H1 features see text were not noted until after the spectral data from RA19 DE 7 on the left was processed The background plot has a slightly expanded scale to show the small background features The spur appears at maximum RASDR gain settings but disappears with background SUD GRACE OM fcc bs secssnus 42 Figure 31 Subtraction of background from raw data and averaging shows the H1 spectrum from RA19 DE 7 This figure is misleading in that the dark sky background region actually contained minor H1 regions and contributions from these regions have been unfortunately subtracted in this plot The center frequency is 1420 405 MHZ cccccccecscecseceteceseeeeeeeeeeenaeens 43 Figure 32 Test System 2 is based on a horn antenna shown here in Two versions were constructed The version on the right had added aluminum foil and lower noise 44 Figure 33 One quarter of a 12 minute Milky W
9. 16bit samples Samplim Rate 32 MHz I amp Q equivalent to 64MHz Nyquist Band pass filter BW 1 5MHz to 28 MHz in 16 discrete steps External Reference Clock Input 10 MHz sine see p 76 1 PPS Input Yes through GPIO pin RF REF connectors SMA female 50ohm PC connectors USB 2 0 or 3 0 ipai Vollase Aa through USB connector Dimensi 70mm x 70mm x 32mm 2 75 x 2 75 x 1 25 for bare PCBs Maximum internal RF gain 61 dB Table 3 Basic RASDR specifications are focused on receive operations from app 0 3 3 8 GHz b Component Board Considerations RASDR USB connectors on the DigiRED board are delicate mechanical strain when connecting and removing must be minimized Itis recommended to install the RASDR boards in a suitable case and use a panel mount USB Switching power supplies can contribute electrical noise and Version 1 7 4 Page 14 of 81 should be only used with caution If RASDR is installed in a box heat sinking or cooling may be advised The thermal transfer characteristics of any enclosure must be such to radiate the heat into the environment outside the box Lime Microsystems Ltd has produced two versions of the MyriadRF board and one of these requires a few additional components to match the DigiRED board Components obtained from SARA will have compatibility between SARA MyriadRF and SARA DigiRED boards c Power and Data Transfer Considerations Pre production RASDR2 units operate from a single USB2 or USB3 power s
10. 8 y MHz Figure 31 Subtraction of background from raw data and averaging shows the H1 spectrum from RA19 DE 7 This figure is misleading in that the dark sky background region actually contained minor H1 regions and contributions from these regions have been unfortunately subtracted in this plot The center frequency is 1420 405 MHz Test System 2 Hydrogen H1 Spectroscopy using a small horn antenna SETI research has been a spur to amateur radio astronomy 31 Associated antennal designs include variations on the horn antenna The antenna of test system 2 was a modification of the SETI Horn of Plenty 32 33 34 adapted to available local hardware store materials and other readily available parts The calculated gain is 21 6dB 35 The overall front end gain was 52 dB with NF 0 35 dB less than typical for amateur scale observatories Thus testing with test systems 1 and 2 demonstrate that radio astronomers with a small horn antenna or a 2m dish reflector antenna should be able to see hydrogen H1 signals with a bit of averaging Version 1 7 4 Page 43 of 81 Figure 32 Test System 2 is based on a horn antenna shown here in Two versions were constructed The version on the right had added aluminum foil and lower noise A thin part of the Milky Way was available for testing and a 3 minute data scan using Test System 2 with subtraction of a 3 minute background provided the H1 spectrum shown in Figure 33 Collected between 201
11. Current User or Local Machine choose Local Machine Figure 4 You may be asked to provide an administrator password please do so 2 After you do that it will ask where to put the certificate please choose Trusted Root Certification Authorities by browsing Figure 5 3 You will be presented with a dialog similar to Figure 6 4 When this process completes you should be able to re open the RASDR authority cer file and it should show that the certificate is trusted as shown in Figure 7 The above procedure was tested with Windows 8 1 It should be similar or identical on Windows 7 and Windows XP The only consideration is to ensure that the procedure is run as an Administrator If you are using an account that does not have administration privileges Least User Privilege then you must switch user to a full administrator account in order to load the RASDR authority cer certificate file using the above steps Once that is done you can log out and resume loading the driver under your user account If you have done the above steps correctly you should be able to double click the RASDR authority cer file under your user account and see a screen similar to Figure 7 After this is done please connect your RASDR to the USB and point the new device manager to the location on the CD containing the driver files D driver Welcome to the Certificate Import Wizard This wizard helps you copy certificates certificate trust lists
12. Figure 48 GPIO Read Action part 1 uie cmt iler tt eanep d cde eror edet e ena 65 Figure 49 GPIO Read Action part 2 uei o tra qa id ede eo ER og eeu ba e are TERR NUR 65 Figure 50 GPIO Write Action Bart FEL used ee eoe restes deett eee derer Sen savnes aquae iu erdt e as Haas 66 Figure 51 GPIO Write Action part 92 aide ote to pad dunt e ded tena be dp aed 66 Figure 52 GPIO Action with invalid pin number yere Sette rti er eon ar ane Mines 67 Figure 53 RASDR Data with PPS signal ON FFTsize 2048 sss 68 Figure 54 RASDR Data with PPS signal OFF FFTsize 2048 sss 68 Fisco JTAG COS BIOL D tu eic uet Cu CE E M re NES C EG 75 Figure 56 LED D9 is illuminated green to denote frequency lock sss 76 Version 1 7 4 Page 7 of 81 List of Tables Table 1 FCC band plan from 3kHz to 30GHZ csserconssvuncepuanssnnesdasuvsacsseexssecsatooidesdeenssvusisvcanisemess 11 Table 2 Candidate radio astronomy research bands Bands shown in and above HF are designated The band shown as VLF has been proposed for radio astronomy under special conditons ES liero ee e ean beta vn n exi bee EAVES San MEP E don RY cru DTE 12 Table 3 Basic RASDR specifications are focused on receive operations from app 0 3 3 8 GHz r EA 14 Table 4 Typical Limits on Sample Rate per System Specifications sss 15 Table 5 Example st
13. Zoom Center KHz 0 Span KHz 2000 t Add Mkr Remove Mkr Start capturing samples Bw MHz 1 5 Y Ir Stop capturing samples RF Ctr Freq MHz 1420 405000 m Ave Ovr Frames 128 VGA1 GainldB 25 17 lt Sa F edu i VGA2 Gain dB 30 1024 lo u Samp Rate MS S LNA Gain Mode Maxgain oy 4 APPLY S Figure 26 Initial choices of RASDR2 control parameters for comparison with typical SpectraCyber results specified minimum BW for this narrow spectral region See text for choice of values shown in red The first tests with these settings provided a noisy graphical output The LNA gain used in this series of measurements was only 15dB and skies were cloudy In general one expects to average over many frames Initial runs with post processing averaging at 99 and 998 frames each frame consisting of an average over 64 FFTs produced the output shown in Figure 27 Typically more gain should be used see discussion of Figure 29 Note that the noise spurs that appeared only after averaging are about 9 dB above the floor and they are present in both tests Collected between 2014 05 15T03 10 18 and 2014 05 15703 10 27 Collected between 2014 05 15T03 22 22 and 2014 05 15T03 23 55 Averaged over 99 frames Averaged over 998 frames 16 r i c o D spectral power arbitrary unit x N Spectral power arDarary wst m i h 28 n n 20 3 z o 2 1 4 2 0 2 n frequency MPt
14. and certificate revocation lists from your disk to a certificate store A certificate which is issued by a certification authority is a confirmation of your identity and contains information used to protect data or to establish secure network connections A certificate store is the system area where certificates are kept Store Location Current User Local Machine To continue dick Next Cancel Figure 4 Certificate Installation Step 1 Version 1 7 4 Page 18 of 81 Certificate Store Certificate stores are system areas where certificates are kept Windows can automatically select a certificate store or you can specify a location for the certificate Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certificate Place all certificates in the following store Certificate store Trusted Root Certification Authorities Figure 5 Certificate Installation Step 2 Security Warning x You are about to install a certificate from a certification authority A CA daiming to represent RASDR Software Development Authority Windows cannot validate that the certificate is actually from RASDR Software Development Authority You should confirm its origin by contacting RASDR Software Development Authority The following number will assist you in this process Thumbprint sha1 A99B 1274 8DOE29DC 3573E222 313E0B16 E3DA1FC7 Warning If you install this root certificate Window
15. and correlating received signals mostly noise with known reference values This is a useful technique for pulsar discovery and investigation and might also be useful for SETI Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence The physics of natural non life based systems can generate periodic and structured signals Examples include periodic solar emissions Jovian Io related radio emission storms pulsar signals structured signals Faraday bands arising from ionospheric effects and SETI The Kepler mission searches a very tiny section of the sky and thus a tiny nearby section of the Milky Way 44 The number of probable extra solar planets discovered by the Kepler mission alone exceeds 4500 in number and a significant fraction of these lie in the Goldilocks zone where life as we know it might prosper There is an interesting reference to this SETI application of the product available via YouTube 31 Milky Way Galaxy Figure 42 The Kepler mission search zone considers a tiny fraction of our galaxy We all of us are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from Jill Tarter Version 1 7 4 Page 52 of 81 Furthermore life may indeed inhabit artificial worlds 45 46 Thus as Seth Shostak said the broader point is that we now know two things that we didn t know 20 years ago First those planets including ones that might be like Earth are
16. and the direction to IN Press Transfer Data See Figure 49 The first byte of the return data represents the value of the GPIO read To write GPIO pins the following steps are performed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Setup an OUT transfer of type VENDOR with code 0xC1 Fill 5 bytes of data with 0x20 N 0 0 V where N is the GPIO number 1 4 you wish to read and V is the value 0 or 1 you wish to set the GPIO to OFF or ON respectively The 0x20 is the CMD GPIO WR code Ensure the number of bytes to send is 64 it must always be 64 Press Transfer Data See Figure 50 Change the code from 0xCO and the direction to IN Press Transfer Data See Figure 51 The first byte of the return data should match the value of V you chose A OxFF value will indicate that the GPIO was not changed For example Figure 52 Software may be written in Python or C or any convenient language that can talk to a USB device based on the firmware vendor command protocol The following figures illustrate the above steps Version 1 7 4 Page 64 of 81 Sey USB Control Center loj xl File Program Help SAS ada URB Stat AbortPipe ResetPipe X BOF RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection Configuration 1 Control endpoint 0x00 Text to send send Hex es ee e i PktMode Transfer File Clear Box Deco Tent Bee CONTROL OUT
17. frequency from the Doppler shift ree f f where v is the velocity in question c is light speed 3e8 m s Af is the frequency range 1 5e6 Hz and f is 1 42e9 Hz This gives v 316km s so the conversion factor is 3 16km s per 1 5MHz Q I am thinking about adding an RASDR2 that you describe and another antenna probably a dish with much larger aperture Other than the limitation you mention about SPCY 5kHz spectra mode bandwidth how do you think it will compare with the RASDR2 A I like both instruments SPCY is a great special purpose instrument and if you want only to record H1 spectra then it s the way to go But RASDR2 can be reconfigured by software to do a variety of things I hope that you will work with us on some creative projects Q I realize that is a very open ended question but I am thinking about stability of the oscillators to do Radio Astronomy as well as ability to do good radio astronomy and overall ease of use for someone who is not good with software and no programming ability A RASDR2 has a very stable TCXO In addition it has an SMA connector to connect to an external GPS stabilized frequency reference These GPS stabilized sources are available from eBay The old ones used Trimble GPS and were about 300 but the new ones TCXO or Rb clock versions appear to be about 140 I haven t used them but we stabilized to the NRAO facility clock last year for measurements at the SARA meeting Q Does the RAS
18. i OUR OY EROR cR E E Ux ne UM Ba td GR SN Na eni UMEN URN RAS 29 Figure 20 LED Indicators on digiRED board eese eee eerte tenete eternam ne 30 Figure 21 L shows Rx and Tx LED indicators and R shows location of LED D9 30 Figure 22 GUI Start window of the RASDRViewer application sessseeeeeee 34 Figure 23 Lime Microsystems chip control Settings sicci esses nei tni a va a ve v S Hughes a n deu a Ia Yn 35 Figure 24 ADC Power pull M Sa 36 Figure 25 FFT Recording configuration esessessessseseessessresresstestesresstesestesseessesersstessessesseesseent 37 Figure 26 Initial choices of RASDR2 control parameters for comparison with typical SpectraCyber results specified minimum BW for this narrow spectral region See text for choice OL Ae ADEREN ONE nE T Kee OEE E 39 Version 1 7 4 Page 5 of 81 Figure 27 The importance of spectral averaging is shown with processing of 99 frames left and 998 frames right Control settings were as shown in Figure 19 for a dark section of sky IBM laptop running WinXP and using a USB2 interface was used for this particular test 39 Figure 28 This figure is the difference file using the 99 file average and the 998 file average shown in Figure 20 The 2dB noise component from Figure 20 left is all that remains The common feature is removed and the same method can be used to remove system noise or select TOF SBORIHIDE
19. nominally specified 0 65 MHz and the measured performance covers the range 2 66 MHz Filter functions are as described with reference to Figure 4 ccsssssccsecssesncsscteseccsstecssscsessesscessecssnsescessatesnasens 50 Figure 40 Two up conversion stages are shown here which provide for conversion of the 2 66MHz portion of the HF band to the 402 466 MHz band prior to processing with RASDR2 The Nooelec converter is on the lower left while the VHF converter described earlier appears at theupper TIRE s ea dice oor Sete M REN Re ASA E M Aer CE Mus 51 Figure 41 Noisy 5 5 MHz section of the HF band centered on 15 MHz This measurement was made with an electrically short antenna and no preamplifier It shows various sources of noise including some from the Nooelec up converter This experiment suggests the importance of a decent antenna more pre amplification and background subtraction esses 51 Figure 42 The Kepler mission search zone considers a tiny fraction of our galaxy 52 Figure 43 CyControl program Firmware update step 1 eee 55 Figure 44 CyControl program Firmware update step 2 sese 55 Figure 45 Select programming file Firmware update step 5 sse 56 Figure 46 Firmware Update SuCCess eie dere e Ege Ou a S EEI r E r E spect ansenns 56 Figure 47 Reinsert USB after Firmware update eese eee eene eene enn enne enne 56
20. the receiver can be put into bootloader mode so that the firmware update can take place This is done by disconnecting the RASDR receiver from the USB port on the computer and setting the switch to PROG or removing the jumper on the J2 connector of the DigiRED board When the RASDR receiver is plugged into the USB again it will identify itself as the bootloader above or Westbridge Either way the procedure for firmware update is the same 1 Open the CyControl exe program that is provided in the software distribution folder or CyControl zip from the rasdr org site 2 Select the Cypress USB BootLoader in the window 3 Select Program gt FX3 gt SPI FLASH a You may see a 2 device driver association If that occurs simply wait until it is finished and then select the Cypress USB BootProgrammer 4 IMPORTANT change the switch from PROG to RUN or fit the jumper on J2 connector of the DigiRED board If you do not do this before the next step the firmware will fail to upload 5 Choose usb rx img from the software distribution folder irmware or D firmware on the RASDR CD 6 Wait until the Programming of SPI Flash Succeeded message is shown See Figure 46 7 Disconnect the RASDR from the USB wait a few seconds and then re connect it Ensure the switch is set to the RUN position that was setup in step 4 above 8 Observe that the RASDR Radio Astronomy RX Interface is loaded
21. transfer 0000 19 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 OO OO 00 00 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 OO OO OO 00 OO 00 00 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 CONTROL OUT transfer completed Figure 48 GPIO Read Action part 1 LITT ial x Fie Program Help soo dii URBStat AbortPipe ResetPipe OK BGC F RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection Configuration 1 Control endpoint x00 Text to send Data to send Hex Interface 0 JF i mnooo o S Bytes to Transfer CONTROL OUT transfer 0000 19 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0020 00 00 OO OO OO OO OO 00 OO OO 00 OO OO OO 00 OO 0030 00 00 00 OO OO OO OO OO OO OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 CONTROL OUT transfer completed CONTROL IN transfer oooo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo 0010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 OO OO OO OO 00 00 00 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 transfer completed GPIO pin value is returned in the first word of the buffer Figure 49 GPIO Read Action part 2 Version 1 7 4 Page 65 of 81 amp gy USB Control Center zip xd File Program Help
22. user may receive an error message if RASDR inserted prior to driver update 22 Figure 11 Choose Device Manager and Update Driver Software ssssssssssss 23 Figure 12 RASDR Driver successful installed i osecossseoasnbeex t aas ER Rag X HURRY DA ERAN LER HEN 23 Figure 13 Message Displayed when RASDR is connected to a port with insufficient power Ie TIE asierea dtr oci ona SEV AUS ERN OUR GE Doc rt eR dtes nbi DH M NOR 24 Figure 14 CyControl Software Details after successful installation sess 24 Figure 15 The core hardware RASDR package consists of two circuit boards 23 Figure 16 The Myriad RF board was manufactured in several versions SARA boards produced in 2014 are matched to the DigiRED board Earlier versions may require addition of a simple dongle with extra resistors oauecorespenesextir bm besar s vH rRR FEY PER FEA UR XE PAN EERN eH NV NE RE ES ONES RENE RN PANURENEK EN TU 25 Figure 17 The MyriadRF board is the RF section of RASDR and interfaces directly to DigiRED via the X3 connector The SMA connectors are for transmit and receive sections Only receive operations are currently supported by the RASDR team sse 27 Figure 18 DigiRED connection descriptions usescsiipasecth ix eei ed eoa ile a Ie iR Hi RA NR ER EN 28 Figure 19 Some Konig L and InateckO PCIE cards provide USB2 USB3 connectivity to PC deskiop CODDULGLS ranes pasa afin Ema des
23. when data is being captured by use of the Start Capturing Samples button on the left of the screen and an output is defined The defined number of FFTs will be recorded on the disk The Stop FFT Rec button can be used to stop recording data before the defined number of FFTs is recorded Once the recording is stopped the Record FFT button can be clicked for additional data as defined either appended or new file suffix In the ver 1 2 2 of RASDR viewer the next file is kept open until the user exits RASDRviewer If the file is examined before closure then the file will be shown to contain zero bytes Post processing of the files produced by RASDRviewer is described in Section 8 Version 1 7 4 Page 37 of 81 7 Basic Radio Astronomy with RASDR discussion and examples RASDR has been applied in several modes 26 to solve some common experimental challenges encountered by members of the community of amateur radio astronomers A few examples will be presented in Chapters 7 and 9 but RASDR is a new tool and 2015 will be the first year of availability Results of operation in several RF spectral bands will be shown and discussed These results include monitoring HI emissions from distant clouds interfacing to the NRAO 40 radio telescope to record spectral data interfacing to the NRAO 20m radio telescope 27 to record and extract information from data taken at different observing sessions monitoring a 10MHz section of the comm
24. 2000000 He 1000000 He 0 He 1000000 He 2000000 He 3000000 He 4000000 He 5000000 Frequency Figure 37 RASDR2 internal narrow banding was chosen to select a region of interest In practice narrow banding is useful to reject unwanted outlying signals noise RASDR2 output is more information rich than suggested here Figure 38 shows the complete primary window display of a 10MHz wide band centered at 90 MHz with the RASDR2 marker function used to denote a couple of interesting local FM stations Additional windows provide Tools and Define Output As data were taken the writer was listening to 91 9 MHz red triangle marker on the stereo Version 1 7 4 Page 48 of 81 b Band Extension Spectroscopy Testing and application to wide band VHF monitoring F Update graphs Vilchannel 7 Q channel Data rate KB s 16128 Updates per second 11 IQ samples versus 2001 2001 100 100i 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000 13000 14000 15000 16000 PU eo00 1000 0 1000 2000 FET MarkerO F 1895880 Hz Gains 20 3 dB Markerl F 893650 He Gains 0 7 dB so di Delta 20 98 W u 3 a E c 5000000 He 4000000 He 3000000 He 2000000 He 1000000 He 0 He 1000000 He 2000000 He 3000000 He 4000000 He 5000000 Frequency Center Freq Hz 0 Span Hzy 10000000 Remove marker Record FFT Stop FFT Rec Start capturing samples Bandwidth MHz 10 3 a ADE Power versus Frames Time i
25. 3 8GHz 5 5dB NF OFF ON Ox2 50ohm termination ON ON Ox3 Band V LNA 0 3 2 8Ghz 3 5dB NF The command does not modify the transmit buffer but the protocol demands that a dummy VENDOR 0xC0 command must be issued Version 1 7 4 Page 58 of 81 See the FFT viewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD SET PA 0x31 enable power amplifier enable TX Command format src 0 0x31 src 1 reserved src 2 1 src 3 reserved Data block src 4 new PA value uas Sets signals on the MyriadRF board to select which LNA input on the LMS6002D is activated and connected to the RX SMA connector The value provided in src 4 encodes the bits as follows Bit 0 O PAO OFF 1 PA0 ON These bits control the Peregrine Semiconductor PE42422 RF Switch under the following table PAO Code Function OFF 0x0 Band I TXOUTI ON 0Oxl Broadband TXOUT2 The command does not modify the transmit buffer but the protocol demands that a dummy VENDOR 0xC0 command must be issued See the FFTviewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD LMS RESET 0x10 reset transceiver Command format src 0 Ox 10 stc 1 reserved FPGA Configuration I2C address src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 new reset pin level 0 low 1 high m Drives the RESET pin o
26. 5 06 20T15 14 47 0000 and 2015 06 20T15 19 01 0000 Averaged over 1000 frames with background subtraction file and 5 point smoothing spectral power dB relative to background 1419 8 1420 0 1420 2 1420 4 1420 6 1420 8 1421 0 frequency MHz Figure 33 One quarter of a 12 minute Milky Way Ra3h De 8 deg data scan with background subtraction and smoothing Version 1 7 4 Page 44 of 81 8 Post processing to extract information from recorded data RASDRviewer can output CSV comma separated value files in long duration format large files permitted or in a shortened format that complies with Excel limitations These data files are useful for analysis via Excel or other programs such as Python routines The RASDR release provides a pre compiled program called plotcsv to post process the output files that RASDRviewer makes Usage plotcsv py lt filename csv gt options Options version Show program s version number and exit h help show this help message and exit a N average N Specify the number of spectra to average for each plot default 1 b PATH background PATH Specify how to perform background subtraction if the word automatic is used then the background will be takenfrom the average of all lines in the file Otherwise it is takenas a file to process The file must have the same frequency plan as the foreground file c cancel dc Cancel out component at frequency bin for O0Hz d CHAR
27. 7 b Installation of Device Diver secssicsseasesscacoasedcanexsndsetasndcaansnadssntateadeacsvantdavauaissaeassseeatensneds 20 3 RASDE Hardware BaSloS eacee enis EE O O E ARO 25 gd MyrnadRF hardWate uutooseieusbisos b enu uius a OT 25 Version 1 7 4 Page 2 of 81 PUT OUT Ut eat rt cso Nc DN 26 Configuration Advanced users sssicsssisssccsscssazesdeasavaschassnassdasecsdacasansstarsevacsascavadsaiassseassaioaies 27 b MOTT ED Barewale ie utei se a eet aud a telas 28 lnp to tp t ME ERNAA 28 USB Oto yu Aga eee eee een tombe Ed pM EM E MM EU 28 LED Tello DOES ie een acte di ate b Mcd bonae aha naa uae cane tears eens 29 COH TI PUTACLOTE ases eati cast pd a de Etat a ioa dtes te adiecit vetere po ru e acetone 31 Loading new Trim Wate v ue a aea cds eee hea Gas aie eee 31 6 RASDRViewer and RASDR Software Basics cccccccccssssccesssecesseecsseeecesseecsseeecsseeecsseeeess 32 a introductio oa eer AMER CRN REAR Sees ENGR SEARS REE UE AA LU E ok 32 b Installing RASDRYVISWSGE 4 sitet stds a eos leer t vette a ne a Rei RR VER EV A 33 e Software Architecture ass aas o i Do pp DEN esa Go unici sisse i 33 d Graphical User Interface odis qe ro don tedio DR oap d nnda b e da mapa dieat 34 E BET OUT Ut 10 DISIe A ote E RUM e E a ED Nae unmute A DURS EM M NE 36 7 Basic Radio Astronomy with RASDR discussion and examples sssse 38 a Hydrogen HI Spectroscopy L band 1420 MHZ sess 38 b System G
28. B Vacaliuc S Kurtz C Lyster C S Z Tamosevicius and S Berl Radio Astronomy with RASDR2 Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers June 29 July 2 2014 at NRAO Green Bank WV 2014 27 P Oxley D Fields B Vacaliuc and C L a F Ghigo Detection of Narrow Spectral Features using RASDR2 and the NRAO 20m Telescope vol p 90 no July Aug 2014 28 J Bernard SpectraCyber I IITM 1420 MHz Hydrogen Line Spectrometer Installation and Operation Manual No SC1 2 2006 Carl Lyster through Radio Astronomy Supplies 2010 Online Available http www ncra tifr res in rpl facilities 4m srt SCL IIManual pdf 29 D F a R group Radio Astronomy with Small Antennas using RASDR 2015 Online Available https groups yahoo com neo groups R ASDR files Accessed 2015 30 RASDRteam RASDR Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio 2014 Online Available http rasdr org 31 D Fields and P Shuch Frontiers of Radio Astronomy amp SETL Third Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop Nov 10 11 2014 Oak Ridge TN Online Available https www youtube com watch v Ci4cwZtub5U Accessed 2015 32 P Shuch SETI Horn of Plenty An Argus Antenna Alternative CQ VHF Ham Radio above 50MHz Sept 2003 Online Available http www setileague org articles ham horn pdf Accessed 2015 33 H Shuch SETI Horn of Plenty construction photos The SETI League Online
29. DRviewer have the math programs to do FFT analysis in it or does it access the math software come from some other site A It contains the math programs The FFT analysis in RASDRviewer is done by FFTW developed at MIT Version 1 7 4 Page 70 of 81 h RASDR amp Myriad RF connectors details X1 Connector DigiRed to Myriad The Myriad RF board X3 connector type FX10A 80P0 is pin compatible with J1 connector on interface board It provides the digital and SPI interface for LMS6002DFN together with the supply voltage and GPIO control for RF switches for Myriad RF board The pin descriptions on this connector are given in the table below 1 5 V in DC 5 V power supply 2 5 V in DC 5 V power supply 3 5 V in DC 5 V power supply 4 5 V in DC 5 V power supply 5 GND Ground pin 6 GND Ground pin 7 3 3V in DC 3 3 V power supply optional 8 13 3 V in DC 3 3 V power supply optional 9 3 3V in DC 3 3 V power supply optional 10 3 3V in DC 3 3 V power supply optional 11 GND Ground pin 12 GND Ground pin 13 Not used 14 Not used 15 Not used 16 Not used 17 GND Ground pin 18 GND Ground pin 19 TXIQSEL in cmos TX digital interface IQ flag 20 Not used 21 Not used 22 Not used 23 TXDO in cmos DACS digital input bit 0 LSB 24 TXDI in cmos DACS digital input bit 1 25 TXD2 in cmos DACS digital input bit 2 26 TXD3 in cmos DAC
30. H Emm Record 10 4 TOTAL FFTs Every 1 el th Frame OK Cancel Figure 25 FFT Recording configuration The top right section of the setup screen is used to define the type of time stamp to be used There are two options Universal Time and Local Time Local Time is taken from the settings used by your computer The second section of the Setup Window is used to define the file name A browse button is included to allow the user to find the directory and file name for the data If the file already exists it is necessary to either select a different file name or check the Overwrite box On the next line in the future the user will be able to define the condition that will trigger recording to the disk At present only the manual trigger is operational Near the bottom of the screen the user can establish how many FFTs to record and how frequently to record them Keep in mind that the Nth Frame represents the FFT after all the averaging that was performed So the interval between frames is a function of the Average Samples per Frame Sample Rate The bottom section contains the OK and Cancel buttons To abandon the setup click the cancel button To establish the selected parameters click OK Back on the main GUI to begin a recording the user first starts to collect data then clicks the Record FFT button which is located on the line below the FFT chart See Figure 22 This button is only active
31. It uses a Windows based GUI that is designed for portability to both the Linux and MAC platforms This portability is mainly based on the use of the wx Widgets development tool that is available as open source freeware wx Widgets abstracts most of the common graphical window objects to a common language that is applicable across all of the platforms Thus the look and feel of the user experience is the same regardless of the platform being used Loading and using RASDRviewer on a Windows operating system is straightforward The Linux and MAC options have not been developed as compiled code on these machines RASDRviewer is a viewer and shows FFT output It is in fact an extension of the Lime Microsystems FFT viewer that adds radio astronomy functionality The original FFT viewer presented three charts I amp Q samples vs time I vs Q for system verification and an output display showing results of a large Fast Fourier Transform FFT that operates in a best effort manner The FFT is capable of delivering up to 16 384 frequency bins multiple times per second For RASDRviewer modifications have been made to customize the software for Radio Astronomy use This includes optimization of control functions for Radio Astronomy use addition of a power vs time plot file outputs and inclusion of a simplified selection of the user options Work is continuing to add additional features aimed at Radio Astronomy applications This includes the Pulsar feature
32. NDOR 0xC0 command will collect the transmit buffer See the FFT viewer source for specific details on the use of this command Version 1 7 4 Page 57 of 81 CMD CFG DC WR 0x14 write I2C bus Command format src 0 Ox 14 src 1 I2C address src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 register address src 5 data to write ae Performs an I2C transaction with the base address given by src 1 src 2 describes the number of transactions n to perform while src 4 src 5 src 2 2n src 3 2n are the register value pairs to write The command does not modify the transmit buffer but the protocol demands that a dummy VENDOR 0xC0 command must be issued See the FFT viewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD_SET_LNA 0x30 select input Command format src 0 0x30 src 1 reserved src 2 1 src 3 reserved Data block src 4 new LNA value sn Sets signals on the MyriadRF board to select which LNA input on the LMS6002D is activated and connected to the RX SMA connector The value provided in src 4 encodes the bits as follows Bit 0 O0 LNAO OFF I LNAO ON Bit 1 OZLNAI OFF 1 LNA1 ON These bits control the Peregrine Semiconductor PE42440 RF Switch under the following table LNAO LNAI Code Function OFF OFF 0x0 Broadband LNA3 0 3 3 0GHz 10dB NF ON OFF Oxl Band XI LNA2 1 5
33. RASDR User Manual 1 7 4 Supporting Software Defined Receiver for Radio Astronomy and RASDRviewer 1 2 2 Version 1 7 4 Page 1 of 81 RASDR User s Manual 1 7 4 supporting Software Defined Receiver for Radio Astronomy and RASDRviewer 1 2 2 Table of Contents List US RI UU m 5 Etol Lables earar E eE a eee eee 8 POLE WOK PEEP E E E T E 9 URS OS Ee E A E E E E SNR 9 Pope e E E E E E E EATE E 9 T README First e osa cda ndn er diam ulus ep e es cave ee gente ee sees 10 2 S RE me M 10 a A Software Defined Receiver for Amateur Radio Astronomers eessssssss 10 b The RASDR Community Developer s group and User s group sessss 11 c Operation of RASDR in Various Radio Astronomy Bands sss 11 3 The RASDR Software Defined RecelVet cese wadedt vdscnp pi adcrovtntavausniaacceiiadaneeinaieveondacss 13 a Specifications sectae e baec Mts essei des Max ned IDA ORE URN EEEE EEEE S HaV PO ES IIEER 14 b Component Board Considerations ccccecssesssecsseceeeceeeeeeseeceaecneeeneeeesaeecaecneeeeeeensaes 14 c Power and Data Transfer Considerations i cscstaniaestanitacieinninienaaumiatedeametaweeucn 15 4 Startup Guide for a RASDR Observatory esssesesesseeseeeseeseesersstesreserssresseserssessessrssresseest 16 a Installation of Signing Certificate sacs ncy sa javetneciulervouavieavsacsaaovsayadesoracscunstecetuctadiuniseesecsbeets 1
34. S digital input bit 3 27 GND Ground pin 28 GND Ground pin Version 1 7 4 Page 71 of 81 29 TXD4 in cmos DACs digital input bit 4 30 TXD5 in cmos DACS digital input bit 5 31 TXD6 in cmos DACs digital input bit 6 32 TXD7 in cmos DACs digital input bit 7 33 TXD8 in cmos DACs digital input bit 8 34 TXD9 in cmos DACs digital input bit 9 35 TXD10 in cmos DACs digital input bit 10 36 TXDII in cmos DACS digital input bit 11 MSB 37 GND Ground pin 38 GND Ground pin 39 RXIQSEL out cmos RX digital interface IQ flag 40 Not used 41 Not used 42 Not used 43 RXDO out cmos ADCS digital output bit 0 LSB 44 RXDI out cmos ADCS digital output bit 1 45 RXD2 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 2 46 RXD3 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 3 47 GND Ground pin 48 GND Ground pin 49 RXD4 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 4 50 RXD5 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 5 51 RXD6 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 6 52 RXD7 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 7 53 RXD8 out cmos ADCs digital output bit 8 54 RXD9 out cmos ADCs digital output bit 9 55 RXD10 out cmos ADCs digital output bit 10 56 RXDI1 out cmos ADCS digital output bit 11 MSB 57 GND Ground pin 58 GND Ground pin 59 RXCLK in cmos RX digital interface clock 60 TXCLK in cmos TX digital interface clock 61 Not used 62 Not used 63 GND Ground pin 64 GND Grou
35. a V Ave Ovr Frames 24 VGAL 637 X 10 m Samps Frame VGA2 Gain dB 3 EH LNA Gain Mode 6 dB i Samp Rate S S STO h 10000000 APPLY sa 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 Chip ver 2 rev 2 mask 1 12 00 PM 5 14 2014 _ Figure 38 The complete RASDR2 video output with VHF input shows the input signal stream as digitized I and Q values the I vs Q plot a circle if there is a single coherent source the FFT spectral display with markers if selected digitization and internal gain settings and a power vs time plot The ratty power vs time plot on the lower right shows the result of moving the antenna c Using the VHF converter to access the NRAO 40 dish Radio access to signals collected by the NRAO 40 telescope are restricted to using the local IF feed This VHF up converter was designed with this challenge in mind Study of HI using RASDR2 at NRAO has been done by dialing in the 40 telescope local oscillator to 1315 MHz and measuring the signal at the output IF feed 1420 1315 MHz which would be at 105 MHz This can be up converted to 405MHz to be examined with RASDR2 d RASDR Spectroscopy in HF band 2 80 MHz RASDR2 operation has been described as applied from 400MHz to 4GHz and with the VHF up converter to the input range from 80 190 MHz To demonstrate functionality in the HF band from about 2 66 MHz we used an up converter obtained from Nooelec 43 that up convert
36. ain Considerations x xor e Ra A essi do PNE am Ripe 40 c Practical System tests Tor H1 deteetiotts s eo ete er oreet Sidi Pci Re tuendo etn 41 Test System 1 Hydrogen H1 Spectroscopy with degraded amplifier 4 Test System 2 Hydrogen H1 Spectroscopy using a small horn antenna 43 8 Post processing to extract information from recorded data sss 45 9 Basic Radio Astronomy below RASDR design frequency ssseseeeee 46 a Radio Astronomy in the VHF band 80 190 MHZ sese 46 b Band Extension Spectroscopy Testing and application to wide band VHF monitoring 49 c Using the VHF converter to access the NRAO 40 dish sssssesssseee 49 d RASDR Spectroscopy in HF band 2 80 MHZ 49 10 Operating RASDR beyond the limits SETI and weak signals sess 52 Ae Appendices ashy sic ped taraa e a A A Mai e T T E 54 3 RASDR DIVET S ee OER n RS Dea E T A E A OL ARES NS 54 b RASDR FMW aranana a a aaa a aa 54 Version 1 7 4 Page 3 of 81 Q Eimware Command Secus oed eet tt br ha biet rasta etree teil i tet inis 57 d Gontrolling GPJO oo deett OE E E A A ES 64 e RASDR Receiver Data Format and Endpoint sse 67 f SPFEOUDISShOOL IB et ace eade ees HEN RR EUR E iced cant Se Rem 69 g General and Frequently Asked Questions FAQS sss 69 h RASDR amp Myriad RE connectors d
37. al core machine with 2GB of RAM in order to use minimum bandwidth over USB2 0 For USB3 0 a quad core machine and 8GB of RAM is necessary Version 1 7 4 Page 15 of 81 4 Startup Guide for a RASDR Observatory Each radio observatory is different Most amateur radio astronomers begin simply monitoring the sun or Jupiter with a long wire antenna or a dual dipole antenna RASDR may be used with block RF converters depending on the spectral region of interest and because of its versatility has utility in many observing projects Some options are covered in this guide while others may be found in the SARA archives Journal and Proceedings A typical RASDR observatory for operation in the 300 3800 MHz spectral region including hydrogen electron spin flip H1 signals is shown in Figure 3 RF 300MHz 3 8GHz 8pin terminal block 5V GND 4 general purpose IO one PPS input LNA LNB RASDRviewer rasdr tcp exe Python Programs te meee meee e Figure 3 Typical RASDR observatory suitable for H1 observations System startup has two goals protection of equipment and validation of performance These important considerations are developed in Table 5 e Mentoring is important SARA members are often willing to mentor new astronomers contact SARA 14 if you have questions Prepare a sheltered protected area and install system components e Provide safe grounded electrical power e Test and approve power s
38. are is written to transfer data from the LMS6002D device synchronously upon the activation of the sampling clock As soon as the sampling clock starts the data begins to fill the buffers in the FX3 USB chip The buffers are available on Bulk Endpoint 0x81 Filling these buffers will raise flow control signals on the FX3 chip but there is no flow control between the LMS6002D and the FX3 Instead two FX3 fifo flags are brought to the upper input pins of every data word These flags allow samples to be invalidated if the host is not able to keep up with the data transfer The GPIO pin PPS is likewise brought to the most significant bit of every data word The indication of I or Q is also encoded within each sample so that software can properly interpret the stream Data Bit Description 0 11 RXD 0 11 12 RXIQSEL 13 FLAGA 14 FLAGB 15 PPS Version 1 7 4 Page 67 of 81 The bit value of IQSEL should toggle between 1 I and 0 Q when sampling normally and without gaps FLAGA and FLAGB should typically always be 1 The PPS will have a value of 1 if nothing is connected to the pin and 0 when a signal is driving it For example Figure 53 and Figure 54 show representative data amp gy USB Control Center ini x File Program Help Pe gg m Aaa URBStat AbortPipe ResetPipe X GC F E RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selecti
39. artup procedure for new RASDR observatory sse 17 Table 6 MyriadRF specto prison desaabbuut aries tue path ivo SU U e EPUM SNR SI NUNG RUN UU PEN E 26 Table 7 Myriad RF Board Connector Assignments ccc ccscecsseceseceseceeseeeseeceseceeeeeeeenseeeaeens 27 Table 8 DigiRED board connectors and switches cccceccceesceesseceseceteeeeeeeeseecaeceeeeeeeenseecaeens 28 Table 9 DigiRED LED status indicators ccscccscccsetscescsscesscesssscssceseccesncesnssessceseecesncesensces 31 Table 10 Examples of system gain from components for monitoring H1 signals The buffer amplifier suggested here permits lower gain settings of RASDR while still giving good H1 spectra SSS DOR SeOLIOIS gae asiste piena rcu otv CER DECEM EN UE dE RU pA cU a ARI E VIS Re E e La Uu du mUER 41 Table 11 RASDR Tecerver USB IDS c EER 54 Table 12 X3 connector pin description sisi jccassaistcetechanecuseniactansibeassalaiecstaratiavessniactatisaesmabaiosiatnwas 73 Table 13 EIER un RET T UU MUT 75 Version 1 7 4 Page 8 of 81 Foreword Thanks to the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers SARA for supporting RASDR as the project has migrated through three different hardware approaches and both design and production challenges This project is a community open source effort for the benefit of SARA members We expect that the fruits of the volunteer labor will be useful to the amateur radio astronomy educational and scientific comm
40. ay Ra3h De 8 deg data scan with background subtraction and smoothing 2oieteequsav ees etas eoe MER AUR AANUD net subua uat ate pe rdc eia Ue 44 Figure 34 Block functions of the VHF converter show conversion of 80 190MHz VHF signals into the RASDR2 input band acceptance range ssssssssssessesseseeeee eere 47 Figure35 Completed VHF converter used with RASDR2 Input is via the coax cable while the output is via the SMA connector shown on the upper right sse 47 Figure 36 Commercial FM band The antenna was a random wire about 2m long connected to the VHF up converter then to RASDR2 The red marker was added on the RASDR2 display to denote a local FM station broadcasting at 102 113 MHZ ssssesseeeenenemenneneee 48 Figure 37 RASDR2 internal narrow banding was chosen to select a region of interest In practice narrow banding is useful to reject unwanted outlying signals noise 48 Figure 38 The complete RASDR2 video output with VHF input shows the input signal stream as digitized I and Q values the I vs Q plot a circle if there is a single coherent source the FFT spectral display with markers if selected digitization and internal gain settings and a power vs time plot The ratty power vs time plot on the lower right shows the result of moving the circi E P 49 Version 1 7 4 Page 6 of 81 Figure 39 Functionality of the Nooelec up converter is as shown The RF input is
41. can establish averaging of the FFT output This is done by clicking the check box and setting the number of FFTs to average Averaging is useful to enhance spectral lines by reducing the variance of the baseline noise Since the baseline noise is random its average value is reduced to the mean of the noise Averaging may help visualize a Spectral line that is close to the noise baseline The FFT chart has the ability to set markers to help identify the specific frequency and peak value of a spectral line The marker controls are below the FFT chart enlarged in Figure 22 To add a marker click the Add Marker button Then move the cursor to the screen and click where the marker should be placed The marker can be moved left or right by dragging it with the mouse With a little bit of practice the user can find the peak value The user can also set the span and center frequency of the display Center Freq Hz 0 Span Hz 10000000 Add n 5tart capturing samples Bw MHz 10 30 Stop capturing samples RF Freq 1 420 7 Ave Ovr Frames M VGA1 25 17 20 aS vam VGA2 Gain dB 30 16384 i 10 Samp Rate S S LNA Gain Mode 6 dB 10000000 APPLY Chip ver 2 rev 2 mask 1 Figure 23 Lime Microsystems chip control settings In the bottom right corner is a display of power at the ADC input Figure 24 ADC Power input below shows this portion enlarged The power is calculated over a frame of complex samples creating a disp
42. e Detection of Jovian VLF Noise Radio Astronomy Journal no March April p 48ff 2014 18 D Fields R Kennedy and K Roy Interplanetary Radio Transmission through Serial Ionospheric and Material Barriers Genta Giancarlo Ed Proceedings of the Severnth IAA Symposium on Relalistic Near Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions Missions to the outer solar system and beyond 2011 19 A R R L ARRL Radio Amateur s Handbook purchase ARRL 2015 Online Available http www arrl org shop ARRL Handbook 2013 Softcover Edition 20 SARA Radio Jove Project 2015 Online Available http radio astronomy org node 211 21 L M S LMS RDK myriad RF reference development kit 2015 Online Available https myriadrf org projects rdk 22 L M S LMS myriadRF projects 2015 Online Available https myriadrf org projects Ims suite 23 P Oxley D Fields and S Kurtz RASDRWin Companion Software for RASDR Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers no July 14 17 2013 24 P Oxley and D K S Fields RASDRviewer RASDR2 Control and Analysis Software Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers no June 29 July 2 2014 25 RASDRviewer RASDRviewer downloads 2015 Online Available https groups yahoo com neo groups RASDR files RASDRviewerSoftware Version 1 7 4 Page 78 of 81 26 D Fields P Oxley
43. e RASDR package consists of two main boards the Myriad RF and DigiRed boards Figure 15 The core hardware RASDR package consists of two circuit boards a MyriadRF hardware Layout RASDR uses the MyriadRF board 21 for RF digitations and front end processing Figure 16 The Myriad RF board was manufactured in several versions SARA boards produced in 2014 are matched to the DigiRED board Earlier versions may require addition of a simple dongle with extra resistors Shown above in Figure 16 the Myriad RF 1 board is a multi band multi standard RF module based on the state of the art LMS6002D transceiver IC by Lime Microsystems It has one RF broadband output one RF broadband input with digital baseband interface established via a high density connector FX10A 80P The board also provides the user with pin headers for power supply reference clock analog I Q input output and SPI interface connections It contains Version 1 7 4 Page 25 of 81 everything needed for it to be connected to baseband BB chipsets FPGAs or to connect to a host interface chip The Transceiver specifications are as shown in Table 6 Lime Microsystems Ltd LMS6002D RF Bandwidth BW 300 MHz to 3800 MHz Baseband BW per I Q channel RF Module Control Via SPI interface via DigiRed 23 41 MHz 10 MHz only for external Reference unless specific frequencies are programmed Input Voltage 5 V recommended B l The Myriad RF1 board is powered th
44. ed Write command returns the value that it set the GPIO pin 2 in this case ON Figure 51 GPIO Write Action part 2 Version 1 7 4 Page 66 of 81 Hae USB Control Center eee File Program Help tes OMG dD URB Stat AbortPipe ResetPpe X GO F RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection E Configuration 1 Control endpoint 000 Text to send Datato send Hex Interface 0 Ho Bytes to Transfer 64 PktMode wee O eme Direction i x Reg Type Vendor 7 Target Device x Req Code xc0 wValue 0000 windex Jo lt oo00 CONTROL OUT transfer 0000 19 05 00 OO OO OO OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 00 OO OO OO 00 OO OO OO OO OO OO 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 00 00 OO OO 00 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 CONTROL OUT transfer completed An invalid GPIO number returns a hex OxFF return code upon the IN transfer to indicate NOP performed CONTROL IN transfer 0000 FF 00 00 OO OO OO OO 00 OO 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0010 00 00 00 OO OO 00 OO OO OO 00 OO 00 OO OO 00 00 0020 00 00 00 00 OO 00 OO 00 OO 00 OO OO 00 00 00 00 0030 00 00 00 OO OO 00 OO 00 OO OO OO 00 00 OO 00 00 CONTROL IN transfer completed Figure 52 GPIO Action with invalid pin number e RASDR Receiver Data Format and Endpoint The RASDR firmw
45. elec com store ham it up v 1 0 rf upconverter for software defined radio html 44 NASA Kepler Discoveries NASA 2015 Online Available http kepler nasa gov Mission discoveries 45 K Roy R Kennedy and D Fields Shell Worlds in Genta Giancarlo Ed Proceedings of the Severnth IAA Symposium on Relalistic Near Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions Missions to the outer solar system and beyond International Academy of Astronautics Aosta IT 2011 46 D Fields R Kenendy K Roy and B Vacaliuc Interplanetary radio transmission through serial ionospheric and material barriers Acta Astronautica no 82 2 pp 251 256 2013 47 D Fields S Kurtz P Shuch S Hogle B Vacaliuc P Oxley K Roy and R Kennedy Algorithmic Communication Structures for Interstellar Travel and SETI Huntsville AL Second Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop 2013 48 P Oxley D Fields and S Kurtz RASDR2 Control and Analysis Software in Proceedings of the 2014 SARA Conference Green Bank WV 2014 Version 1 7 4 Page 80 of 81 13 Index Add Marker 35 Architecture 33 artificial worlds 53 Basic Radio Astronomy 38 display FFT span 69 Excel files 69 External frequency input 30 FAQs 69 Faraday bands 52 FFT output file contains zero bytes 37 FFT Output to Disk 36 firmware 33 Goldilocks zone 52 Graphical User Interface 34 graphics GL capability 69 Installing RASDRviewer 33 internal noi
46. ercial FM band with a wire antenna and monitoring a section of the crowded HF short wave band with a wire antenna a Hydrogen HI Spectroscopy L band 1420 MHz Using RASDR2 for observing an HI hydrogen cloud signal requires a suitable antenna a high gain preamp LNA perhaps a supplementary amplifier and signal averaging to extract the HI signal from the RF noise A common question asked is how much sensitivity is needed A popular special purpose spectrometer that works well for observing HI emissions from distant hydrogen clouds is SpectraCyber II 28 which was invented and constructed by RASDR team member Carl Lyster As a point of reference the SpectraCyber bin width is about 5 KHz If we desire to cover 10 MHz of HI spectrum then we probably require about 2000 frequency bins or about 2048 samples FFT One may choose a higher number of samples FFT observe more detail although more averaging would be required One of the significant advantages of RASDR2 is that it has a wide bandwidth RASDR2 control data consist of only a few values and they are discussed in Chapter 6 Based on the preceding discussion an initial data screen for H1 spectroscopy is shown in Figure 26 NOTE The internal tuning oscillator inside the LMS6002D produces a small amount of spectral energy which leaks into the ADC front end Thus it is necessary to tune slightly off the spectral region of interest to avoid desensitizing Version 1 7 4 Page 38 of 81
47. eserved Data block src 4 value to set O off 1 on src 5 not used pem src 63 not used Turns the GPIO pin on the DigiRED expansion header into an output and sets its value src 1 represents the GPIO pin to use which are described by the following table GPIO pin Case PIN DigiRED Connector Pin 1 X3 3 2 X3 5 3 X3 7 4 X3 9 NOTE the GPIO number and the Prototype Case connector pin are the same One word is written to the transmit buffer representing the status of the command as follows 0x0 The pin was set LOW Oxl The pin was set HIGH OxFF The gpio pin number was invalid no operation performed The 0xC0 RESPONSE IN VENDOR command must be issued to collect the transmit buffer Version 1 7 4 Page 63 of 81 d Controlling GPIO All of the firmware functions can be accessed without software by using the CyControl application It may be possible to control the GPIO via this interface if support is not provided in RASDRviewer or another program To read GPIO pins the following steps are performed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Setup an OUT transfer of type VENDOR with code 0xC1 Fill 5 bytes of data with 0x19 N 0 0 0 where N is the GPIO number 1 4 you wish to read The 0x19 is the CMD GPIO RD code Ensure the number of bytes to send is 64 it must always be 64 Press Transfer Data See Figure 48 Change the code from 0xCO
48. essing programs The output in this case uses whichever sample rate samples per FFT and bandwidth is present in the controls on the bottom left of the main screen The general purpose output produces an ASCII formatted text file containing some details about the data capture a separator string a comma separated list of frequency for a column followed by rows of records containing a timestamp and power spectral density values per frequency column The extension used is provided by the user but using csv can allow the data to be loaded in MS Excel easily The top center of the setup window is used to determine the behavior in the event multiple record sessions are desired There are two options one to append the data to the previous file and one to create a new file with a suffix number in the file name NOTE If you are planning to use post processing it is important to select the multiple file option as the append option is not supported by the post processing tools Version 1 7 4 Page 36 of 81 Setup FFT Output J xj File Type Number of Files Time Standard C Excel Limited Bins C Single Appended Local Time i e EST 9 General Comma Delimited Multiple Suffix File Name Universal Time UT Data Sourcew C ALLFFT Bins ZOOM FFT Range Bins ENTER File Name rtc Browse I Overwrite File Trigger with Record Button Trigger Power FUTURE Trigger Time FUTURE Tigger On at GE
49. etails ae adea pe t dr cese atau acs 7 X1 Connector DigiRed to Myriad s o eos ere Rope etra img pate n base tas os 71 X2 Connector FX3 JTAG Interface redet e en onde EI ELSE eed vias 74 X3 Connector PPS and GPIO Connector ioo ens RR ade eet ee dat Ae 75 i X7 Connector Input Reference Frequency Provision 76 12 SREIGEEHOO SO AER RO a SU Eu ua E M SF MCE BREE ERE 77 13 sot TP THES 81 Version 1 7 4 Page 4 of 81 List of Figures Fiore 1 RAS DR funictotial Overview cz idxesseaiaiatsieeratiaialeiasianeeniareaniieeden a n aaa 13 Figure 2 RASDR mounted in CAS Gx inen teri o riu dva UR Un Mati URP NEA tH KU M ERA ars c rp E 14 Figure 3 Typical RASDR observatory suitable for H1 observations sess 16 Figure 4 Certificate Installation Step 71 cx csccsasssivesscssacenactveieseustsussansequssuateaceascesstasuavsecensassseaseasts 18 Figure 5 Certificate Installation Step 2 s esssesessesseseessesesesseserstssesessessesessestestsseseestsseesessesee 19 Figure 6 Certificate Installation Step 3 assnconiqudqaii nie agi rated tpa a db d M RE REL RN cu 19 Figure 7 RASDR authority cer details after successful Certificate installation 20 Figure 8 First Time Installation with properly installed Certificate sess 21 Figure 9 RASDE Driver Details sass saccasscsacsanss eoi Din REA EDDA ERIT R BEAR XR DRRR REEL ARCA PUE RANA EAR AE CY HUN OE UR 22 Figure 10 The
50. g the right port may be a challenge as some laptops provide only limited power output In this case you will see a message such as Figure 13 2 Ideally you will see a message such as Figure 8 This means that the Certificate installation above was successful and the driver package can be installed Please click Install 3 Following a successful installation you can open the device manager and select the DigiRed_RX device You should see details such as described in Figure 9 If you see this then your RASDR is installed and you can stop Otherwise please continue Version 1 7 4 Page 20 of 81 4 You may see a message such as Figure 10 That is OK You will update the device driver in the next step Please note that under Windows 8 or 8 1 the only way to install the device driver is to successfully install the Certificate so the rest of these instructions will only apply to Windows 7 Vista or XP 5 Start the Windows Device Manager You may need to provide an administrator password Select the DigiRed RX device and choose Update Driver Software as shown in Figure 11 6 Choose Browse my computer and navigate to the folder on the CD under D driver based on your operating system a win7 if you are using Windows 7 b vista if you are using Windows Vista c wxp if you are running on Windows XP 7 Ensure that Include subfolders is checked and press Next 8 Observe t
51. h of the MyriadRF board The rendering system for the plots makes use of OpenGL capabilities of your system This means you will need a reasonably strong graphics processing unit GPU and optimized drivers NVIDIA graphics cards made after 2009 are generally OK The system uses custom firmware that is loaded onto the FX3 chip in the DigiRED board This includes a unique RASDR Vendor and Product ID VID PID pair This allows the user to connect to RASDR2 without concern of not finding the correct USB3 driver The software uses this unique VID PID together with a version register on the Lime Microsystems Ltd chip to verify that system connections are correct The user must use the driver provide on the CD or from rasdr org that matches the VID PID of the RASDR device The firmware provides not only the high speed data interface but also a capability of establishing a Serial Peripheral Interface SPI bus to perform the control of the ADF4002 clock generator and the LMS6002D chips on RASDR2 board set In addition the firmware can provision the use of the General Purpose Input Output GPIO pins on RASDR2 A separate FPGA has been avoided on RASDR2 This has reduced the cost of RASDR2 Graciously provided by OpenMoko Version 1 7 4 Page 33 of 81 d Graphical User Interface When the user executes RASDRviewer a screen that provides charts of the collected data is displayed as seen in the figure below Spectrum Pulsar 4 Update graphs
52. hat the RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR RX Interface is successfully installed as shown in Figure 12 At this point you may use the CyControl software on your CD to check the details of the RASDR device See Figure 14 At this point your system is ready to run RASDRviewer W exe or RASDRproc d exe Would you like to install this device software Name Cypress Universal Serial Bus controllers IT Publisher RASDR Software Development and Testing Always trust software from RASDR Software Install Development and Testing You should only install driver software from publishers you trust How can decide which device software is safe to install Figure 8 First Time Installation with properly installed Certificate Version 1 7 4 Page 21 of 81 General Driver Detais Events RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Driver Date 8 21 2014 12 3 10 RASDR Software Development and Testing To view details about the driver files To update the driver software for this device If the device fails after updating the driver roll back to the previously installed driver Disables the selected device To uninstall the driver Advanced ox Figure 9 RASDR Driver Details Device driver software was not successfully installed DigiRed_RX 3 No driver found What can I do if my device did not install properly Figure 10 The user may receive an error message if RASDR
53. he CPU core s on chip debug circuitry The FX3 s is selected via the JTAG switch Version 1 7 4 Page 74 of 81 Figure 55 JTAG conector NOTE the JTAG connector will not be populated in production RASDR devices X3 Connector PPS and GPIO Connector GEIGER Lc 5 GPO onik annat GBRICTRS X sT vaus SV 49 A GPIO connector is available on the DigiRED board for expansion This connector is brought out in the prototype RASDR as describes in the following table GPIO pin Case PIN DigiRED Connector Pin Function 1 X3 3 GPIO 3 3V 5V tolerant 2 X3 5 GPIO 3 3V 5V tolerant 3 X3 7 GPIO 3 3V 5V tolerant 4 X3 9 GPIO 3 3V 5V tolerant 5 X3 1 PPS 3 3V 5V tolerant 6 GND GND 7 GND GND 8 X3 19 4 3V 250mA supply Table 13 GPIO Assignments The PPS pin is specially routed to the highest order bit bit 15 of the digital I Q data input As such it is sampled synchronously at the sampling rate used for the device Software can use this transition to refine the timestamp When the PPS signal is provided by a GPS or other synchronized source any number of RASDRs can be synchronized to each other The voltage output pin is provided to allow an up converter or small device to be powered by the RASDR A diode is fitted between X3 19 and the case pin 8 This prevents current from flowing back through the USB con
54. incredibly plentiful in the visible universe There could be a billion trillion cousins of our world Second life got started on Earth very early Of course coincident transmission and reception of radio signals from different solar systems requires degrees of proximity in both space and cultural level Meanwhile the rich physics of the universe provides many opportunities to detect and study weak signals The applicability of RASDR to SETI activities has been noted 47 and successful detection of signals from intelligent non human life will probably one day be accomplished I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years otherwise we would have heard radio waves Stephen Hawking Version 1 7 4 Page 53 of 81 11 Appendices a RASDR Drivers Microsoft Certified drivers are available for the RASDR device at rasdr org Vendor ID 0x1D50 Product ID RX 0x6099 Product ID TX 0x609a Product ID Bootloader 0x609b Table 11 RASDR receiver USB IDs Table 11 above details the USB IDs that are used by the RASDR receiver There are some cases when an un programmed board will identify itself as Westbridge or Cypress USB Bootloader If this is the case please refer to section b below on updating the firmware b RASDR Firmware To operate properly the RASDR receiver must contain the VID PID described in the above table To support firmware updates
55. ined in blue Version 1 7 4 Page 40 of 81 Table 10 presents examples of rough calculation of system gain for possible monitoring of H1 signals Antenna 20 30 40 LNA 18 25 30 Buffer Amp 20 30 40 RASDR internal gain 61 61 61 Total System Gain 109 136 171 Table 10 Examples of system gain from components for monitoring H1 signals The buffer amplifier suggested here permits lower gain settings of RASDR while still giving good H1 spectra see next section The nominal gain for this example is 136dB RASDR gain is adjustable so for this example the internal amplifiers have been set to a maximum internal gain of 61dB To bring a modest H1 signal to a detectable level the desired System Gain might be depending on the object in the antenna beam a range from 125 140dB Some systems will not need a buffer amplifier or post processing for weak signals while others may require it The user may boost the amplifier gain or rely on numerical averaging either in RASDRviewer or in post processing with Excel or Python in order to observe the signal For post processing to be useful the input signal to RASDR must have remained above the internal noise floor during the measurement Depending on the noise statistics a rule of thumb is that the power level of the signal noise from the external amplifier chain is above the RASDR noise floor by greater than 5 This will ensure that the signal is being digitized and that
56. inserted prior to driver update Version 1 7 4 Page 22 of 81 mitis 2F RS gt lt 2 Keyboards gt A Mice and other pointing devices p Monitors 4 4D Network adapters i Bluetooth Device Personal Area Network 2 EP Bluetooth Device RFCOMM Protocol TDI 2 xy Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64 oll Intel R Dual Band Wireless AC 7260 EP Intel R Ethernet Connection D18 LM Update Driver Software Windows has successfully updated your driver software Windows has finished installing the driver software for this device RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Figure 12 RASDR Driver successful installed Version 1 7 4 Page 23 of 81 r USB Hub Power Exceeded The Cypress USB BootLoader is connected to a hub that does not have enough power available to suppor it The unused ports shown in bold type belong to hubs that can support the device E J My Computer 13 ports Unused Port Unused Port USB 2 0 MTT Hub 3 ports Disconnect the Cypress USB BootLoader from its current port and then connect it to one of the unused ports shown in bold type Figure 13 Message Displayed when RASDR is connected to a port with insufficient power delivery Figure 14 CyControl Software Details after successful installation Version 1 7 4 Page 24 of 81 5 RASDR Hardware Basics As can be seen from the figure below the core hardwar
57. ion 1 7 4 Page 47 of 81 The circuit shown has a mixer with about 10dB gain resulting in no overall signal loss for the unit The noise floor is about 120 dBm The unit is intended for several applications including meteor detection spectroscopy with the NRAO 40 antenna and solar monitoring A convenient test signal is the commercial FM band using a wire antenna about one wavelength long A length of hookup wire was connected to the input of the up converter Figure 36 shows a 10 MHz section of the commercial FM band taken directly from the RASDR2 GUI video output using a 2m piece of hookup wire for an antenna and the up converter of Figure 35 FFT Marker F 2lI3040 Hz Gain IL dB Amplitude P 5000000 Hz 4000000 Hz 3000000 Hz 2000000 Hz 1000000 Hz Ws 000000 He 8000000 Hz 3000008 Hz 4000000 Hz 5005000 Frequency Figure 36 Commercial FM band The antenna was a random wire about 2m long connected to the VHF up converter then to RASDR2 The red marker was added on the RASDR2 display to denote a local FM station broadcasting at 102 113 MHz Selecting RASDR2 internal filters to narrow the band to 2 5 MHz width demonstrates a practice that is useful to reject interfering signals outside the region of interest and avoiding any intermodulation The result of setting the bandwidth to 2 5 MHz is shown in Figure 37 FFT M rker0 F 213040 Hz Gain 3 4 dB Amplitude 5000000 He 4000000 He 3000000 He
58. l tool for students that are learning the phase relationship between I amp Q signals and flags the existence of any possible imbalance between I and Q channels In the middle of the screen there is a display of the FFT output The vertical axis is in decibels dB The horizontal axis is the frequency of the FFT bin at baseband Zero frequency corresponds with the center RF frequency The frequency bin bandwidth can be changed by using different sample rates and samples per frame which are set on the bottom left of the screen Figure 23 below shows an enlarged portion of the screen where operating parameters can be set The user can change the experiment parameters by using the controls in the bottom left section of the screen This is where one would set the frequency bandwidth sample rate frame size and Version 1 7 4 Page 34 of 81 gain The changes are not put into effect until the user pushes the apply button When the apply button is clicked the system forwards the necessary commands via the SPI bus described above to the Lime chip on RASDR2 The top left portion of the controls section on Figure 22 contains buttons that start and stop the capture of the data When the start button is clicked the charts will show the results of the samples The start button will also activate the Apply button which ensures that changes in parameters are included in the results Just below the Start and Stop buttons is where the user
59. lay of the RMS power in the frame The power chart is useful during drift scan experiments The power will peak when the desired object is centered in the antenna beam width The display may be renormalized by clicking on Set Power Reference SetPwrRef Version 1 7 4 Page 35 of 81 ADC Power versus Frames Time Figure 24 ADC Power input All of the charts allow the user to change the range of the chart by dragging a box around the section of the chart to enlarge Clicking on the left side of the chart restores the default ranges The charts are updated multiple times per second The time between updates varies with different setup parameters The frequency updates Second is shown on the top of the screen e FFT Output to Disk Recording data to a disk file or files can be accomplished by using the Define Output menu item on the second line of the screen Clicking the button will bring up a sub menu of the types of outputs available only FFT output at present Clicking the FFT output menu item will bring up an overlay panel for the setup of recording parameters Figure 25 is a screen shot of this window On the left of the top line the user can select the File type Two options are available The first is for use in MS Excel where the number of frequency bins is reduced to a maximum of 128 to allow Excel to be able to process a 3D chart in a reasonable period of time The user can select the General Purpose output for use in other post proc
60. mixing would have been up converted to below 300MHz to avoid the third harmonic of the local oscillator LO that was used for mixing and to remove the LO fundamental frequency component Our VHF up converter uses the third harmonic of a 100MHz oscillator 38 39 The 3rd harmonic 300MHz is mixed with the input signal The following basic components are also required plus about 25 additional inexpensive components Crystal oscillator Raltron CO19025 100 000MHz 39 Low Pass Filter LFCN 225 40 Mixer IAM81000 41 Output Bandpass filter combination PHP 400 42 LFCN 225 40 Version 1 7 4 Page 46 of 81 Figure 34 shows the functional diagram of the VHF up converter constructed for RASDR2 tests RASDR2 VHF Upconverstion stage RF IF Input _ 80 190 MHz nominal 380 490 MHz Output Figure 34 Block functions of the VHF converter show conversion of 80 190MHz VHF signals into the RASDR2 input band acceptance range Several filters are shown the input low pass filter to avoid VHF components in the input from reaching the mixer the 300 MHz bandpass filter to clean up the third harmonic of the oscillator and the output bandpass filter two filters are used in our unit to select just the frequency components desired from the mixer stage fw M wen t ran as Figure 35 Completed VHF converter used with RASDR2 Input is via the coax cable while the output is via the SMA connector shown on the upper right Vers
61. n Rx PLL as well as the ADC sample clock The software sets the values of these devices in a transparent manner to the user For example when the user changes the RF center frequency on the screen appropriate registers are set via the SPI bus to change the frequency Likewise registers are set when the user changes the sampling rate An example reference clock could be based upon either an OCXO or MASER clock possibly locked to GPS time to provide the PPS signal Version 1 7 4 Page 76 of 81 12 References 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 SARA RASDR Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio 2015 Online Available http www radio astronomy org rasdr Accessed 2015 Lime Lime Microsystems Field Programmable RF FPRF Transceiver IC Lime Microsystems 2015 Online Available https github com myriadrf LMS6002D docs Digikey Digi Key Catalog Digikey 2014 Online Available http www digikey com product search en x 0 amp y 0 amp lang en amp site us amp keywords myriadRF RASDRgroup RASDR Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio 2014 Online Available http rasdr org Users RASDR User s Group 2015 Online Available https groups yahoo com neo groups RASDR info Lime Microsystems Ltd MyriadRF Discourse for RASDR Online Available https discourse myriadrf org c projects rasdr Accessed 6 10 2015 Github 2015 Online Available https github com m
62. n the MyriadRF board to reset the LMS6002D Multiple bytes can be used extend the reset pulse length The command does not modify the transmit buffer but the protocol demands that a dummy VENDOR 0xC0 command must be issued Version 1 7 4 Page 59 of 81 See the FFT viewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD LMS RD 0x17 read transceiver register Command format stc 0 Op code i e read from the LMS6002D Configuration via I2C SPI src 1 reserved FPGA Configuration I2C address src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 SPI Instruction W R module addr register address LH s Reads LMS6002D registers src 2 describes the number of transactions n to perform while src 4 src 4 n 1 are the the registers to read Upon completion the command will fill the transmit buffer with n values read A subsequent VENDOR 0xC0 command will collect the transmit buffer See the FFTviewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD LMS WR 0x16 write transceiver register Command format src 0 Op code i e read from the LMS6002D Configuration via I2C SPI stc 1 reserved FPGA Configuration I2C address src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 SPI Instruction W R module addr register address src 5 SPI Data ase Writes LMS6002D registers src 2 describes the number of
63. nd pin 65 GPIOO Version 1 7 4 Page 72 of 81 66 RESET in cmos Hardware reset active low 67 GPIO1 68 SPI MOSI out cmos Serial port data out 69 GPIO2 70 SPI MISO in out cmos Serial port data in out 71 Not used 72 SPI CLK in cmos Serial port clock positive edge sensitive 73 GND Ground pin 74 SPI NCSO in cmos Serial port enable active low 15 CLK IN in cmos PLL reference clock input 76 Not used 77 GND Ground pin 78 Not used 79 TXEN in cmos Transmitter enable active high 80 RXEN in cmos Receiver enable active high 81 GND Ground pin 82 GND Ground pin 83 GND Ground pin 84 GND Ground pin 85 GND Ground pin 86 GND Ground pin 87 GND Ground pin 88 GND Ground pin Table 12 X3 connector pin description A schematic diagram of the connector is provided below The Myriad RF board is directly plugged into the X1 connector The digital I Q connector is a digital transmit TX and receive RX interface to the ADC DAC of the LMS6002D Version 1 7 4 Page 73 of 81 vULE o GND par o S R110 gy 22 r ee ee EXER EAT SPD suc RT 22 S 8112 T324 E SBCLK a SPLSCK_Rx f eps TOSS 22 SPLSSNRx ob FXLOB 80S 8 SV o5 X2 Connector FX3 JTAG interface FX3 s JTAG interface has a standard five pin interface to connect to a JTAG debugger in order to debug firmware through t
64. nector if a large voltage is inadvertently applied to the voltage pin The GPIO pins all have Zener diodes to clamp the input to 5 1V in case a large voltage is inadvertently applied Version 1 7 4 Page 75 of 81 i X7 Connector Input Reference Frequency Provision The Input Reference Frequency has performed well in tests at NRAO where a 10MHz facility reference signal was used As indicated above the PPS feature is currently not supported but is expected to be activated in future firmware by providing 1Hz 3 3V pulse with 1096 duty cycle on the port CLK Ext will provide the clock from the SI5356 to the user if required The 10 MHz reference input drives an Analog Devices ADF4002 PLL chip on the DigiRED board When the reference frequency is present and the PLL is locked to it the green LED D9 see Figure 56 will be illuminated Figure 56 LED D9 is illuminated green to denote frequency lock The input signal should be a square wave or clipped sine wave with LOW HIGH voltage of 0 and 3V 2 7 3 3V max value range The ADF4002 reference input is a CMOS type with a nominal threshold of 1 5V and a dc equivalent input resistance of 100 kO Thus expected current draw from the reference is in the order of 100uA The RASDR firmware is fixed to use 10 MHz as an input custom programming of the ADF4002 registers can be performed The ADF4002 feeds the clock distribution chip SI5356 The clock distribution chip feeds the down conversio
65. nna that is very short 2m compared to the frequency Figure 41 shows a 5 5 MHz section of the HF band centered on 15 MHz The plot contains signals spurs and noise The lesson from this figure is that one must use a respectable antenna and preamplifier possibly a preselection filter and background subtraction for a noisy so dB u a a a T 50 dB L 5000000 Hz 4000000 Ws 3000000 Hz 2000000 Hz 1000000 Hz THz 1000000 Hz 2000000 Hz 3000000 Hz 4000000 Hz 5000000 Frequency Figure 41 Noisy 5 5 MHz section of the HF band centered on 15 MHz This measurement was made with an electrically short antenna and no preamplifier It shows various sources of noise including some from the Nooelec up converter This experiment suggests the importance of a decent antenna more pre amplification and background subtraction Version 1 7 4 Page 51 of 81 10 Operating RASDR beyond the limits SETI and weak signals Extraterrestrial civilizations may use unknown modes for transmission of information Nevertheless they are probably constrained by physics of which we know a part to the electromagnetic spectrum for long range transmissions RASDR covers a useful section of this spectrum for communication with civilizations of the same level of technological development as our own Various techniques exist for pulling weak signals out of the noise They include using larger antennas employing lower noise preamplifiers signal averaging
66. ns See appendix e for more details X4 TX USB USB2 3 interface connection for TX path X5 RX USB USB2 3 interface connection for RX path 10 MHz Reference clock input for ADF4002 to lock the external d SMA ironie clock from test equipment with DigiRED board clock This connector enables TX uC to load the firmware at startup Jl TX Flash If firmware is already loaded these pins should be shorted jumper in place This connector enables RX uC to load the firmware at startup J2 RX Flash If firmware is already loaded these pins should be shorted jumper in place USB Control Table 8 DigiRED board connectors and switches Rx control and data streaming is performed through USB3 0 RX connector which is also backwards compatible with USB2 0 Version 1 7 4 Page 28 of 81 A computer with USB2 connectivity can accept RASDR data using a USB2 cable however the bandwidth BW will be limited up to 10 Msps A USB2 USB3 adaptor can be added to permit USB3 input but not all such adaptors are equivalent since different chipsets are used by different vendors For desktop PCs good results have been obtained with the Konig Electronic CMP PCIE2USB3 PCI Express card with the NEC Renesas UPD720202 chipset available from Amazon for about 36 2015 price i yA inatecK Figure 19 Some Konig L and Inateck PCIE cards provide USB2 USB3 connectivity to PC desktop computers Good results were also obtained with an Inateck KT4007
67. nt since different chipsets are used by different vendors For desktop PCs good results have been obtained with the Konig Electronic CMP PCIE2USB3 pci express card with the NEC Renesas UPD720202 chipset available from Amazon for about 36 An ASUS u3s6 PCIE didn t work well An Inateck KT4007 board functioned well in tests Q May I use an old computer A Older computers that don t have sufficient graphics OpenGL capability may need to be updated NVIDIA graphics cards made after 2009 are probably OK Q How do I avoid Excel files becoming large and unmanageable A Set the file save spectral span to a subset of the displayed BW The display FFT span is intended to be a way to zero in on a narrow portion of the bandwidth It is used to obtain a smaller number of columns on the output FFT file This is done by selecting the option on the file setup screen The setting of the span to match the sample rate is intended to prevent displaying meaningless data You can also edit the resulting csv file in a text editor before loading into Excel to reduce the number of rows in the file Q How significant is the Doppler shift for H1 measurements A We see signals from neutral hydrogen atoms H1 emission at different frequencies All those H1 sources are in motion and a good rule of thumb is to examine the velocity Doppler shift over Version 1 7 4 Page 69 of 81 a 1 5MHz section of spectrum One can compute the velocity v for a given
68. o send to the ADF which must be formatted according to the protocol defined by the ADF4002 for register changes Does not modify the contents of the return buffer but the 0xCO RESPONSE IN must be made and the contents are to be ignored See the FFTviewer source for specific details on the use of this command Version 1 7 4 Page 61 of 81 CMD_GPIO_RD 0x19 change GPIO pins to input and read state Command format src 0 0x19 src 1 GPIO pin number to read src 2 reserved src 3 reserved Data block src 4 not used ens src 63 not used Turns the GPIO pin on the DigiRED expansion header into an input and reads its value src 1 represents the GPIO pin to use which are described by the following table GPIO pin Case PIN DigiRED Connector Pin 1 X3 3 2 X35 3 X3 7 4 X3 9 NOTE the GPIO number and the Prototype Case connector pin are the same One word is written to the transmit buffer representing the status of the command as follows 0x0 The pin is LOW 0x1 The pin is HIGH OxFF The gpio pin number was invalid no operation performed The 0xC0 RESPONSE IN VENDOR command must be issued to collect the transmit buffer Version 1 7 4 Page 62 of 81 CMD_GPIO_WR 0x20 change GPIO pins to output and set value Command format src 0 0x20 src 1 GPIO pin number to write src 2 reserved src 3 r
69. on E Configuration 1 Control endpoint 0x00 Text to send Data to send Hex Pee bytes needs to match E Altemate Setting Bulk out endpoint 0x01 Pe RASDRviewer FFT size 4 Bikinendpont sy S182 PrtMode PPS signal is driven ON Figure 53 RASDR Data with PPS signal ON FFTsize 2048 Z USB Control Center lini x File Program Help teg i 2a URBStat AbortPipe ResetPpe X amp D f E RASDR Radio Astronomy SDR Rx Interface Descriptor Info Data Transfers Device Class Selection E Configuration 1 Control endpoint 0x00 Text to send Data to send Hex E Interface 0 E Altemate Setting 0 Bulk out endpoint 0x01 Bulk in endpoint 0x81 PPS signal was OFF Figure 54 RASDR Data with PPS signal OFF FFTsize 2048 Version 1 7 4 Page 68 of 81 f Troubleshooting It is recommended that the new user read at least the contents and Chapter 1 of this Guide The FAQs may prove helpful A few users may have ill advisedly skipped the README First Chapter 1 This contains useful sources of information and specific links to the RASDR User s Group and other RASDR support groups as well as email addresses for users with specific questions g General and Frequently Asked Questions FAQs Q Will RASDR work using USB2 cables connectivity A Yes but with reduced bandwidth An adapter can be added to permit USB3 input but not all such USB2 USB3 adapters are equivale
70. on to low band or high band RX input X6 RXTEST x7 TXTEST SMA connector that provides connection to low band or high band TX output Not supported by the RASDR2 Ext CLK Connector used to supply PLL clock externally Use external clock on DigiRed connector Connector used to control LMS6002DFN SPI registers externally SPI register are X9 Ext SPI sont controlled via X3 connector through DigiRed board Table 7 Myriad RF Board Connector Assignments Configuration Advanced users The MyriadRF board can be configured to a high level of detail through the RASDR Viewer software configuration utility via the menu This contains the Lime Microsystems Ltd configuration utility that comes with the Myriad RF board 22 The main GUI takes care of all the settings needed to operate the receiver for most use situations Version 1 7 4 Page 27 of 81 b DigiRED hardware Input output Figure 18 DigiRED connection descriptions The following table describes the DigiRED board connectors shown in the figure above XI Myriad RF board The FX10A 80P is a connector used to interface the Myriad RF connector board directly to a base band board See appendix e for more details Five pin JTAG interface to connect to a JTAG debugger in FX3 T PE SORONNA OE USB microcontroller See appendix e for more details Connections to FX3 USB microcontroller GPIOs for more details X3 GPIO connector i see the next sectio
71. ource computer or powered hub The second USB charging port on the bare DigiRED board should not be used since this may introduce reverse current flow in other USB connected components RASDR production units may use an external power supply rather than be powered from the USB2 or USB3 connectors Data are routed through the receive USB3 connector located close to the end of the board with the two SMA connectors Please use RASDRviewer for control If RASDRviewer is not used then there is a chance that transmit functions may not be suppressed and it will be most important that the transmit SMA connector is fitted with a 50 ohm terminator to minimize RF noise Data transfer rates are faster when a USB3 superspeed connection is used but require more CPU and system capability A USB2 connection will operate reliably on almost all systems but with lower bandwidth up to 10 Million samples sec Msps System Base Specification USB2 0 USB3 0 Dual Core 2GB RAM 2Msps Not Recommended Dual Core 4GB RAM 4Msps Not Recommended Quad Core 8GB RAM 10Msps 32Msps Table 4 Typical Limits on Sample Rate per System Specifications Some USB3 adapter chipsets function better than others so if you are adding a USB3 adapter to your system be prepared to experiment or request suggestions from the User s Group See Table 4 above on typical system specifications needed A minimum system specification for a RASDR should be a du
72. p conversion or system control devices and external frequency time reference signals Version 1 7 4 Page 9 of 81 1 README First Please read Chapter 2 through Chapter 4 before starting to connect and use your RASDR Please join SARA 1 and the User s group The SARA RASDR pages 4 1 provide news and new information The RASDR User s Group 5 and the RASDR Discourse 6 are good resources to obtain community support and help The development sites 4 7 are available for people who wish to help contribute or to use the design for their own purposes including RASDR software development Users having general questions should post them to one of the User sites Specific questions may be sent to members of the RASDR team at the following addresses Software issues Contact RASDRviewer radio astronomy org Hardware issues Contact RASDRhardware radio astronomy org or discuss the issue with the RASDR Discourse 6 on the MyriadRF forum https discourse myriadrf org c projects rasdr Application issues Contact RASDRapplications radio astronomy org or discuss the issue with the User s Group on Yahoo https groups yahoo com neo groups RASDR info 2 RASDR goals This section highlights some of the goals of the RASDR project a ASoftware Defined Receiver for Amateur Radio Astronomers RASDR is SDR that is optimized for radio astronomy suitable for a wide variety of SARA projects and is functionality extends from a f
73. r 12 MHz LNB Req 6670 KU Band 12178 Methanol Maser Activity Narrow Band LNB Required KU Band 14500 Table 2 Candidate radio astronomy research bands Bands shown in and above HF are designated The band shown as VLF has been proposed for radio astronomy under special conditions 18 Version 1 7 4 Page 12 of 81 3 The RASDR Software Defined Receiver RASDR consists of a Myriad RF board RF Transceiver and a DigiRED board clock distribution and USB interface The RASDR functional overview is shown in Figure 1 Note that RASDR does not include an antenna LNA secondary amplification external frequency reference computer etc Figure 2 shows the hardware packaged into a prototype metal case Most RASDR cases use inexpensive decals rather than the ink jet process shown here RASDR is a versatile instrument but the user must tailor it to specific applications by including the necessary supporting components to build the desired observing system Rx cloc 12 bit Q I Interleaved R E a au RF 300MHz 3 8GHz 8pin terminal block 5V GND 4 general purpose IO one PPS input REF IN 10MHz Figure 1 RASDR functional overview Version 1 7 4 Page 13 of 81 Figure 2 RASDR mounted in case a Specifications Basic RASDR specifications are presented in Table 3 Transceiver chipset Lime Microsystems LMS6002D RF Bandwidth BW 300 MHz to 3800 MHz ADC Resolution 12 bits recorded in
74. r use with RASDR See chapter 9 d below for a project in this area If interference from RF signals causes spurs and noise floor elevation an RF filter may be used either ahead of the LNA or between the LNA and RASDR Usually the latter is a better starting point a Installation of Signing Certificate To begin insert the CD that came with your RASDR device or download the RASDR software distribution from the rasdr org website Unpack the files and take note of the location you will need it when you connect the RASDR receiver to your computer The remainder of this section assumes that you are using the CD and that it has been mapped to drive letter D The RASDR drivers are signed with a certificate that must be provided to the operating system prior to connecting the RASDR receiver to your computer This certificate is only provided on the RASDR CD On it you will find a RASDR authority cer file Before you plug in your T remember attaching a wire clothing hanger to the antenna of my radio in my bedroom so I could get the frequency and get that station and listen to the top 10 every night Nelly Furtado Version 1 7 4 Page 17 of 81 RASDR board please access this file using the Windows explorer Follow the instructions below to install the certificate to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store 1 Double click the RASDR authority cer file and press Install Certificate a Ifyouare asked to choose
75. recently published in the SARA journal The system uses a device driver that is repackaged from the driver provided by Cypress Semiconductor the manufacturer of the USB3 chip on the RASDR2 DigiRED board The GUI provides the user interface in a format that is familiar to the user of the chosen platform However compilation chain can prove difficult to establish because of its complexity Details of setting up the compilation chain can be found on the developer site 7 myself eschew all stimulants I also practically abstain from meat Nikola Tesla Version 1 7 4 Page 32 of 81 RASDRviewer currently operates on most Windows platforms that are in current use This includes Windows XP Vista 7 and 8 It is developed on Windows 7 and 8 Development continues to port the system to Linux and MAC platforms b Installing RASDRviewer RASDRviewer runs under Windows XP Win 7 and 8 It is available for download from rasdr org as described in one of the new member messages for the RASDR User s Group or in the README file following 25 It should be noted that the README text file will change with each subsequent version of RASDRviewer c Software Architecture The software is organized in classes modules and files Threading call back and event timers are used to process the data collected High speed multiple core platforms will provide the maximum performance which includes data collection at 32 Msps and the full 28 MHz bandwidt
76. ront end receiver through a software driven desktop computer back end 4 8 The receiver uses a computer chip containing the entire RF digital receiver chain designated LMS6002D 9 10 The back end computer controls the front end and enables the user to control receiver functions display signals and perform analysis functions averaging computation of spectrograms determination of power time spectrum and generating output files Signal processing permits dealing with low signal to noise ratio S N information and presents data as spectral plots and data files RASDRviewer software 11 12 for the Windows OS performs parameter optimizations user control spectra output power characterization and output data formatting via a Graphical User Interface GUI This design evolution is based on the need to have widest possible data pipeline speed for radio astronomy applications and to make this available to SARA members at cost to produce 13 Version 1 7 4 Page 10 of 81 b The RASDR Community Developer s group and User s group It is recommended that the user begin by becoming a member of SARA 14 On the home page there is a tab for RASDR at the top and a graphic for the RASDR open source history on the right side of that page There is a RASDR User s Group 5 and a MyriadRF sponsored RASDR Discourse 6 forum There is no cost to join these groups and you may get questions answered by the community of like minded folks c
77. rough the DigiRED board via the USB cable EUM E Table 6 MyriadRF specifications Programmable 16 selections 0 75 14 MHz Bypass mode Reference Clock frequency Input output Figure 17 and Table 7 below provide key Input Output configurations connector assignments and descriptions The analog differential IQ interface is available on Myriad RF board and provided via X3 and X4 connectors X6 and X7 are the RF connectors for receive input and transmitter output clearly marked in the picture The front end switches are configurable for selecting Receiver inputs and Transmitter outputs via GPIO s which in turn can be controlled via the X3 connector Top View Bottom View Version 1 7 4 Page 26 of 81 Figure 17 The MyriadRF board is the RF section of RASDR and interfaces directly to DigiRED via the X3 connector The SMA connectors are for transmit and receive sections Only receive operations are currently supported by the RASDR team 5 V supply External 5 V supply Supplied via DigiRed x3 Dieital 1 0 The FX10A 80P is a connector used to interface the RF board directly to interface 8 board or any other baseband board Used by DigiRed For details see Appendix E x4 TX Analog TO Connector used to supply Transmit analog I Q signals Not usable on RASDR2 without hardware change x5 RX Analog IO Ponce used to measure Receive analog I Q signals Not usable on RASDR2 without hardware change RXTEST SMA connector provides connecti
78. s this HF input band to a 102 166 MHz output band Thus the output is compatible with input of the VHF converter described earlier Version 1 7 4 Page 49 of 81 The Nooelec upconverter functionality is shown in Figure 39 The device shown has a measured internal loss of about 10 dB of signal The noise floor is about 80 dBm This device was used with a 100 MHz crystal oscillator but one can also obtain it with a 125 MHz oscillator If this component selection is made then the output will be shifted by 125 MHz and avoid the commercial and aircraft bands RASDR2 HF upconverter nooelec board IF Output 0 66 MHz 100 200 MHz AN Figure 39 Functionality of the Nooelec up converter is as shown The RF input is nominally specified 0 65 MHz and the measured performance covers the range 2 66 MHz Filter functions are as described with reference to Figure 4 Version 1 7 4 Page 50 of 81 For testing purposes the HF up converter was mounted as shown in Figure 40 where it is the PC board on the lower left The VHF converter discussed earlier is shown on the upper right 65 MHZ UPCONVERT 200 MHZ PASS Figure 40 Two up conversion stages are shown here which provide for conversion of the 2 66MHz portion of the HF band to the 402 466 MHz band prior to processing with RASDR2 The Nooelec converter is on the lower left while the VHF converter described earlier appears at the upper right Results were as might be expected using an ante
79. s will automatically trust any certificate issued by this CA Installing a certificate with an unconfirmed thumbprint is a security risk If you dick Yes you acknowledge this risk Do you want to install this certificate Figure 6 Certificate Installation Step 3 Version 1 7 4 Page 19 of 81 General Details Certification Path A Certificate Information This certificate is intended for the following purpose s All issuance policies All application policies Issued to RASDR Software Development Authority Issued by RASDR Software Development Authority Valid from 9 15 2015 to 12 31 2039 Figure 7 RASDR authority cer details after successful Certificate installation b Installation of Device Driver Ensure that your RASDR receiver is set to RUN or that it has the jumper fitted onto the J2 connector of the DigiRED board Connect the USB cable between the RASDR receiver and the desired USB port on your computer You may use either a USB2 0 or USB3 0 port although recommended operation of RASDR for a USB3 0 connection requires a modern multi core computer and greater than 4GB of system memory You will then go through a series of steps to associate the device driver with the RASDR receiver as shown in the series of screenshots Figure 10 through Figure 12 The following procedure should be followed 1 Connect the RASDR receiver USB port to the desired USB port on your computer a For USB3 0 selectin
80. se floor 41 Kepler 52 LED D9 30 Version 1 7 4 LED indicators 29 Mazimum internal RF gain 14 number of FFTs to average 35 Nvidia graphics cards 33 old computer 69 70 pci express card 29 post processing 41 Postprocessing 45 RASDR noise floor 41 reference clock 76 save spectral span 69 Serial Peripheral Interface SPI bus 33 SpectraCyber 38 spectral span 69 System Gain Considerations 40 USB2 cables connectivity 69 USB2 USB3 adaptor 29 USB2 USB3 adaptors 69 VHF band 46 Page 81 of 81
81. sending data On when orange data are streamed D8 Yellow Firmware indicator Flashes when firmware is ok On in bootloader orange mode Frequency lock status D9 Green Frequency lock indicator Green when frequency lock is achieved Table 9 DigiRED LED status indicators Configuration The DigiRED board is controlled by RASDRviewer application see next chapter Loading new firmware From factory the RASDR receiver will be loaded with the latest firmware however updates are available via rasdr org Please refer to Chapter 11 b for details on updating the firmware in the field Version 1 7 4 Page 31 of 81 6 RASDRViewer and RASDR Software Basics a Introduction For many users the meat of the Software Defined Receiver is the software Evolving software provides the promise for developing algorithms that process the detected radio frequency signals to extract details on the underlying physics and astronomy processes that generated the signals There are various approaches to data processing The foci of RASDRviewer is to program MyriadRF demonstrate via its GUI Graphical User Interface the existence and form of the signal and route the digitized data to the background computer for processing display and program control RASDRviewer is also a data capture utility that selects and saves data for subsequent processing RASDRviewer 23 24 is the primary software that controls RASDR2 and presents captured data to the user
82. subsequent processing can improve the weak signal c Practical System tests for H1 detection The observing systems discussed in Table 10 Examples of system gain from components for monitoring H1 signals The buffer amplifier suggested here permits lower gain settings of RASDR while still giving good H1 spectra see next section Thus it is not absolutely necessary to use a buffer amplifier It was attempted to demonstrate H1 spectrum capture without using a buffer amplifier 29 Test System 1 Hydrogen H1 Spectroscopy with degraded amplifier The initial tests included data collection at 19h right ascension RA and 7 deg declination DE Background data were collected in a nearby weak signal area maintaining the elevation setting for convenience at 20h RA and 7 deg DE Data were saved for 5 minutes and as expected from a system operated 8 dB below a typical amateur system were noisy Both signals were averaged using the plotcsv 30 program and showed Figure 30 a small artifact on the left and the data from RA29 DE 7 showed two or three hydrogen regions with different Doppler shifts Version 1 7 4 Page 41 of 81 Collected between 2015 05 09T08 46 50 and 2015 05 09T08 53 59 Averaged over 7999 frames file and 4 point smoothing dp m i i 0 4 0 2 spectral power arbitrary unit a 0 0 0 2 0 4 frequency MHz Figure 30 L shows the raw averaged RASDR spectrum center frequency 1420 407 MH
83. th an exe and as py to allow inspection of the code and modification if necessary We have setup an area in the User s Group 36 to share scripts and other items developed by the community at https groups yahoo com neo groups RASDR files PostprocessingSoftware Version 1 7 4 Page 45 of 81 9 Basic Radio Astronomy below RASDR design frequency This chapter describes the application of up converters to extend RASDR to frequencies from 20 400MHz this is below the nominal limits of the bare RASDR unit Software control was via RASDRviewer a Radio Astronomy in the VHF band 80 190 MHz It is highly desirable to extend RASDR2 coverage to lower frequency RF bands Such an extension makes it far more useful to SARA members This section describes extension of operation to the Very High Frequency VHF band specifically 80 190 MHz This band is useful for solar monitoring and for meteor detection and it also contains an AM aircraft band amateur radio activity commercial FM band that are interesting for performance verification and the output Intermediate Frequency IF band for the 40 Green Bank Radio Telescope 37 To add functionality below the intrinsic RASDR2 band an up converter was designed and constructed The basic LM6002d covers a wide frequency range from 300 3800 MHz An amateur built VHF up converter extends reception to an input frequency band between 80 190 MHz Filters were included to reject incoming signals that upon
84. transactions n to perform while src 4 src 5 src 2 2n src 3 2n are the register value pairs to write The command does not modify the transmit buffer but the protocol demands that a dummy VENDOR 0xCO0 command must be issued See the FFTviewer source for specific details on the use of this command Version 1 7 4 Page 60 of 81 CMD_GET_INFO 0x50 query information about the FX3 controller firmware Command format src 0 0x50 src 1 reserved src 2 reserved src 3 reserved Data block src 4 not used D cas src 63 not used Obtains information on the firmware Upon execution fills the transmit buffer with 10 bytes of data Byte 0 0x0 if the device is the Receiver and 0x1 if the device is the Transmitter not used in RASDR Byte 1 contains the value returned by CyU3PGpifGetSMState see the Cypress documentation for details Byte 2 9 contain the ASCII code for the board serial number in nnn nnnn format A subsequent VENDOR 0xC0 command will collect the transmit buffer See the FFTviewer source for specific details on the use of this command CMD ADF WR 0xAD change frequency synthesizer parameters of ADF4002 Command format src 0 OXAD src 1 reserved src 2 Data blocks in buffer src 3 reserved Data block src 4 data h src 5 data src 6 data 1 Jl si src 2 defines the number of bytes t
85. unities The RASDR hardware will be available at cost to SARA members and affiliates RASDR software is in a continual process of upgrading with the intent of adding features Please communicate with the RASDR group at RASDRapplications radio astronomy org Sincere thanks to all on the RASDR team who contributed to this project License Unless otherwise specified all software source files are licensed using the GNU General Public License Version 2 To read details of the license please visit http www gnu org licenses All hardware related designs source artifacts and documentation are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3 0 Unported To read the details of the license please visit http creativecommons org licenses by 3 0 legalcode Abstract RASDR is a software defined receiver SDR for radio astronomy 1 The device consists of two high density circuit boards separated by analog and digital operations The analog board contains a wide band radio frequency RF to baseband transceiver used for femtocell telecommunications 2 3 applications The digital board is a control and data interface to a computer via universal serial bus USB The RASDRviewer software runs in a Windows environment and performs receiver control fast Fourier transform FFT analysis and spectrum averaging power monitoring and data collection The user is responsible for supplying an antenna preamplifier band pass filter optional u
86. upplies for proper DC levels and minimal AC or line noise e Connect and validate operation of RASDR computer with no antenna connection e Verify that there is no DC on the RASDR input especially if a bias T is used to provide power to the preamplifier Astronomy Impossible to understand and madness to investigate Sophocles c 420 BCE Version 1 7 4 Page 16 of 81 e Connect antenna preamp output to RASDR and perform function tests with an unpowered preamp RASDR should detect interference signals from local 400 425MHz TV WiFi etc e Provide power to preamp and observe increase in signal measured by RASDR e Test with noise source or with antenna pointed at dark sky vs at building trees hand etc e Observe available sources sun hydrogen clouds in our galaxy artificial sources etc Table 5 Example startup procedure for new RASDR observatory The above reference to the antenna suggests its importance Antennas have different forms and must fit the frequency being monitored the experimenter s budget and the available space The intricacies of antenna selection lie beyond the scope of this text but the SARA literature Journals and Proceedings can be very helpful Antennas can be built at low cost Especially for frequencies below 1 GHz the Radio Amateur s Handbook 19 can be useful For Jovian monitoring near 20 MHz a dual dipole antenna is attractive 20 but requires a suitable RF block upconverter fo
87. which uses the NEC D720201 chipset The Konig and Inateck boards are shown in Figure 19 Please share your observations and experiences with the RASDR User group LED indicators RASDR status may be monitored by LEDs on the DigiRED board DigiRED board is supplied from the computer via USB connection Once the USB cable is connected the green power LED s labeled 3 3V and 1 2V should go on see Figure 20 Version 1 7 4 Page 29 of 81 Rx Tx LED Power LED Figure 20 LED Indicators on digiRED board Six yellow LEDs show the Rx and Tx digital signal status See Figure 20 and Figure 21 for board position and Table 9 for the interpretation of the status LEDs External frequency input verified by LED D9 is discussed on page 76 Hc Figure 21 L shows Rx and Tx LED indicators and R shows location of LED D9 Version 1 7 4 Page 30 of 81 DI Green 3 3v regulator power status On when powered D2 Green 1 2v regulator power status On when powered Transmitter data status from Chip U1B CYUSB3011 D3 Yellow Not used in production orange RASDR D4 Yellow Not Used in production orange RASDR D5 Yellow Not Used in production orange RASDR Receiver data status from Chip U2B CYUSB3011 D6 Yellow Rx command indicator Flashes while DigiRED is receiving commands orange On in bootloader mode D7 Yellow Tx command indicator Flashes while DigiRED is
88. yriadrf RASDR P Oxley B Vacaliuc D Fields C Lyster S Kurtz and Z Tamosevicius RASDR update Radio Astronomy Journal of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers no January February p 72ff 2014 LimeMicrosystems Field Programmable RF FPRF Tranceiver IC Lime Microsystems 2014 Online Available https github com myriadrf LMS6002D docs 10 Myriadrf Home page of Myriadrf Online Available http myriadrf org Accessed 20 May 2013 11 Myriad Personal Communications to RASDR team 2013 12 P Oxley D Fields and S Kurtz RASDR2 Control and Analysis Software Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers NRAO Green Bank WV 2014 13 B Vacaliuc D Fields P Oxley S Kurtz C Lyster R Vadoklis and Z Tamosevicius Production Manufacturing Plan for RASDR2 Appliance Proceedings of the Annual Version 1 7 4 Page 77 of 81 Meeting of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers NRAO Green Bank WV 2014 14 SARA Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers Home Page 2015 Online Available www radio astronomy org 15 Wikipedia Radio spectrum 2014 Online Available http en wikipedia org wiki Radio spectrum Accessed 11 May 2014 16 D Fields and N Tesla Detection of Jupiter Radio Emissions below the Plasma Cutoff Frequency Implications for SID Monitoring Annual Meeting of SARA at NRAO Green Bank WV 2011 17 J Avellon
89. z frequency Mhz Figure 27 The importance of spectral averaging is shown with processing of 99 frames left and 998 frames right Control settings were as shown in Figure 26 for a dark section of sky IBM laptop running WinXP and using a USB2 interface was used for this particular test A second necessity is to remove the background noise and normalize for system response Figure 28 shows the result of subtracting the two files shown in Figure 27 to remove the common baseline variation and the 9 dB spurs This component is not present in the 998 FFT average Version 1 7 4 Page 39 of 81 Collected between 2014 05 15T03 22 22 and 2014 05 15T03 23 55 3 Averaged over 998 frames with background subtraction spectral power dB relative to background 2 L n 0 frequency MHz Figure 28 This figure is the difference file using the 99 file average and the 998 file average shown in Figure 27 The 2dB noise component from Figure 27 left is all that remains The common feature is removed and the same method can be used to remove system noise or select for genuine signals b System Gain Considerations The question arises as to how much amplifier gain and how much post processing is necessary to detect H1 signals A user s system might be configured as shown in Figure 29 Antenna Control ADC Comm gt Amp Internal Figure 29 Example system configuration for H1 detection RASDR hardware is outl
90. z from RA19 DE 7 and R the background spectrum from RA20 DE 7 a rather thin part of the Milky Way The background region was chosen using published maps and the small H1 features see text were not noted until after the spectral data from RA19 DE 7 on the left was processed The background plot has a slightly expanded scale to show the small background features The spur appears at maximum RASDR gain settings but disappears with background subtraction Reexamination of the background file from RA20 DE 7 showed the presence of small H1 signals apparent in Figure 30 R at the rest frequency and about 0 18 MHz from 1420 407 Mhz plus a broad region at higher frequencies Figure 31 shows the post processed H1 spectrum from RA19 DE 7 and this time with the center offset frequency specified for the plot axis The small rest frequency peak no Doppler shift has disappeared Thus the background had been badly chosen The AL rotator motor failed the next day so a repeat measurement with darker background was not made This shows the importance of choosing a dark sky reference region for background and for carefully inspecting the background data before using it Version 1 7 4 Page 42 of 81 Collected between 2015 05 09T08 46 50 and 2015 05 09T08 53 59 Logarithm averaged over 7999 frames with background subtraction file and 5 point smoothing IN Nam A nw vr AA ve hal Nat W 1420 0 1420 2 1420 4 1420 6 1420

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