Copyright 2012 Clayton Smith

This file is part of gr-dsd

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#gr-dsd

Author: Clayton Smith

Email: argilo@gmail.com

The goal of this project is to package Digital Speech Decoder (DSD) as a GNU Radio block, so that it can be easily used with software radio peripherals such as the Ettus Research USRP or RTL2832U-based USB TV tuners.

Note that it is still in an early stage of development. Not all of DSD's configuration options are exposed yet. I have only tested on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit with GNU Radio 3.6.1, so please let me know if you have any trouble building and running it.

Build instructions:

cmake .
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

You may need to install dependcies: sudo apt-get install libsndfile-dev libitpp-dev

After running the above commands, "DSD Block" should appear under the "DSD" category in GNU Radio Companion, and "block_ff" will be available in the "dsd" Python package.

The block expects 48000 samples per second input, and outputs sound at 8000 samples per second. The input should be FM-demodulated (for example, with GNU Radio's Quadrature Demod block) and should be between -1 and 1 while receiving digital signals. (A quadrature demod gain of 1.6 works well for me for EDACS Provoice.) The input signal should also be free of DC bias, so make sure you are tuned accurately, or filter out DC.

To save CPU cycles, the block detects when the input is zero and avoids sending it through DSD. Thus it helps to put a squelch block before gr-dsd, especially if you're using many copies of gr-dsd in parallel.

The underlying DSD and mbelib were taken from:

https://github.com/szechyjs/dsd
https://github.com/szechyjs/mbelib

No modifications to mbelib were required, but DSD has been modified to bypass the sound card. The GNU Radio block itself was adapted from the gr-howto-write-a-block sample included with GNU Radio.

Contributions are welcome!

##Examples By: Luke Berndt lukekb@gmail.com

I added the examples to help make it a little easier to get started using the gr-dsd block. I have included a GRC file, a python program and example files on how to use the python program. These are all based off of the OP25 Example file from Baz.

###GRC File To use the GRC file, simply load up GNURadio Companion, open the DSD.grc file and connect your SDR. Once you run the file you will see a large FFT that will display all of the spectrum the SDR sees. You can type in the center frequency into the Frequency box. You want to pick a center frequency that is close to your target frequency, but not the same. This is because there is some DC interference right at the center frequency. In order to tune in your target frequency, you type in the offset into the Xlate Offset box. So if you are trying to tune in 856.8175 Mhz, you could type 856800000 into the Frequency box and 17500 into the Xlating Offset box. (You may actually need to type -17500, I get confused on this and I think the final frequency display is broken). This will tune you to the correct frequency.

Unforunately SDRs are not 100% accruate. Click on the Xlate-1 tab. It will display an FFT of the channel that you are trying to decode. Use Fine Offset slider to center the spike of your channel in the middle. You may need to adjust the Gain up or down to get it to play correctly. The gain slider adjusts the IF & BB gain used in the HackRF. You could tie it to the RF gain instead if you change the OsmoSDR Source block.

###Python Program The Python program is the same thing, except without the GUI. You can simply enter the values you used in the GRC program using the command line arguments. If you know how far off your SDR is in the frequency band you are interested, use the -E argument. This will let you use the actual frequencies for the channel you are trying to tune in. Again, make sure you tune in a center frequency that is slightly away from your target frequency. You will probably have to adjust the various Gain values to find something that works reliably. I have included some sample Shell Scripts that I use to tune in specific systems.