5 ms·
Disclaimer: I have no more knowledge than what's up on their page, a lot of this is professional guesswork. 1. It most likely can. They are probably hoping to
by patrickyeon 14y ago
Disclaimer: I have no more knowledge than what's up on their page, a lot of this is professional guesswork.
1. It most likely can. They are probably hoping to not bother the FCC by treating it as "test equipment" (that's what Ettus Research does), leaving the responsibility of compliance with the end-user.
1b. I doubt they're getting as much as a Watt out of that board (personal estimate would be a peak of 10-50mW, [10-17 dBm]) so in ideal conditions, significantly less power than a cell phone or wifi signal. Still enough to be trouble in some bands, and it doesn't change the regulatory situation.
2. There is an FPGA, so there is a physical possibility. It's not a trivial thing though, and working with FPGAs is even more remote from what most programmers are used to than working with GPUs. If I had to guess, the plan would be to capture/transmit bursts, with processing in between, instead of real-time signal/protocol shifting.
- igorsyl 14y agoDoes it look like Per Vices' product is similar to Ettus'? Maybe cost being the significant difference? I am not familiar with the specifics of wifi protocols. Is the wifi protocol fit into the rx/tx burst+processing or RT signal/protocol?
- altrus 14y agoBiggest differences between our product, Phi, and the USRP (ettus) are cost and bus. We use a x4 PCIe, providing much higher transfer bandwidth (8Gbps vs 1Gbps). Additionally, the RF front ends are fully integrated (lowers cost). We're aiming to have the user manual up by the end of the week, which should provide much more information.
- patrickyeon 14y agoI guess (stressing 'guess') you could do wifi fine, if you can afford a lot of dropped packets. You would listen for some short while, and process that signal to look for packets sent your way. When you needed to send data back, you pre-process it one packet at a time, ('packets' at the wifi level, not necessarily TCP/IP) and when you hava packet you just fire it out the radio. There's a fair bit of work going on behind the scenes there, and wifi is a pretty heavy protocol to work with like this. I would be very surprised if Per Vices doesn't move to a seperate wifi chip in a future version, if they stick to the 'universal bridge' product. For such a popular protocol, it would make much much more sense.
- altrus 14y agoDear Patrick, I'm one of the founders of Per Vices. To confirm; 1. We are currently selling our device as test and measurement equipment. The intended use case is academic or research. 2. You're mostly correct about power - although it turns out that, depending on regulatory jurisdiction and the frequency or band of interest, power level can matter. 3. Actually, we're aiming for real time programming using gnuradio. You're absolutely right about the bursting, though - our initial programs were almost exactly as you described. Long term, one of our driving goals is to drastically reduce the barriers (specifically cost and expertise) standing between the average software programmer, and a 'hello world' program that can usefully transmit information.
- patrickyeon 14y agoThanks for weighing in. I hope I don't come off too aggressively negative. I used to work for thinkRF (nearby, in Ottawa), and I think I was just exposed to too many people who counted on software to magic away everything. I feel like I need to keep enthusiasm in check, having seen the problems people will run in to.
- altrus 14y agoThat's perfectly valid - I don't immediately disagree with that approach; especially because there are many things software can't fix. But I also think it's much easier to address problems in software than in hardware...
- altrus 14y agoDear Patrick, I'm one of the founders of Per Vices. To confirm; 1. We are currently selling our device as test and measurement equipment. The intended use case is academic or research. 2. You're mostly correct about power - although it turns out that, depending on regulatory jurisdiction and the frequency or band of interest, power level can matter. 3. Actually, we're aiming for real time programming using gnuradio. You're absolutely right about the bursting, though - our initial programs were almost exactly as you described. Long term, one of our driving goals is to drastically reduce the barriers (specifically cost and expertise) standing between the average software programmer, and a 'hello world' program that can usefully transmit information.