Tagged: M17

Creating a Multicarrier Base Station Transceiver For DMR, YSF, M17 and more with MMDVM and LimeSDR

Thank you to Adrian, creator of the QRadioLink software for writing in and sharing with us his post about how he uses a LimeSDR as an Multi Mode Digital Voice Modem (MMDVM) for various modes including DMR, YSF and M17. 

A MMDVM is usually a computing device running multiple radios, each of which is used for a separate channel with it's own filters and power amplifier hardware. Each channel can run a separate protocol if desired. 

However in order to save on radio hardware, Adrian wanted to use his LimeSDR as the radio hardware in his MMDVM system. The LimeSDR is a transceiver which has enough bandwidth to implement several channels just by itself. To do this Adrian uses his MMDVM-SDR software.

His implementation runs multiple instances of MMDVM-SDR, one instance for each channel. Then a GNU Radio flowgraph with LimeSDR block connects to each of these instances, transferring data between GNU Radio and MMDVM-SDR via ZeroMQ or TCP sockets. The bulk of Adrian's post explains the architecture in detail. Adrian writes:

The setup can transmit 7 digital carriers in 200 kHz occupied spectrum, and each radio channel can be assigned to a different mode or digital voice network as configured in MMDVMHost.

This is based on the work of Jonathan Naylor G4KLX and Rakesh Peter (r4d10n).

Adrian also notes that this is still a work in progress and there are still several limitations including high latency and issues with filtering, overload and poor channel rejection. 

Multi-Channel MMVDM LimeSDR Architecture Overview

SDRangel Now Available on Android: Mobile ADS-B, AIS, APT, Digital Voice, POCSAG, APRS, RS41 Radiosonde Decoders

SDRangel is a free open source software defined radio program that is compatible with many SDRs, including RTL-SDRs. SDRAngel is set apart from other programs because of it's huge swath of built in demodulators and decoders.

Thank you to reader Jon for writing in and noting that SDRangel has recently been released for Android as a free Google Play download. This is an amazing development that could open up many doors into portable decoding setups as the Android version supports almost every decoder implemented on the desktop version. Jon writes:

It includes most of the functionality of the desktop version of SDRangel, including:

  • AM, FM, SSB, Broadcast FM and DAB, AIS, ADS-B, Digital Voice (DMR, dPMR, D-Star, FreeDV), Video (DVB-S, DVB-S2, NTSC, PAL), VOR, LoRa, M17, Packet (AX.25), Pager (POCSAG), Radiosonde (RS41), Time signal (MSF, DCF77, TDF and WWVB) modems.
  • RTL SDR, Airspy, Airspy HF, LimeSDR, HackRF and SDRplay support via USB OTG as well as networked SDRs
  • 2D and 3D signal analysis in both time and frequency domain with statistical measurements of SNR, THD, THD+N, SINAD, SFDR and channel power
  • Satellite tracker, star tracker, maps and rotator controller

It should work on Android 6 and up. It’s a straight port of the desktop application, so although it will run on a phone, probably best used on a large tablet with a stylus or mouse.

SDRangel on Android
SDRangel on Android