Corrected text...
I don't have a SDR, but have been pursuing this idea on my LP-100
reflector with some sharp guys who do. What I have been able to gleen is
that with the best sound card currently available (which requires a
Firewire interface), you can get 192 kHz sampling. *After filtering to
avoid aliasing, I assume this would provide maybe 90 kHz of clean
display. *With the best board tested by QST, the bandwidth would be
about half that.
The dynamic range would be in the 100-110 dB range... adequate for a
panadapter in a normal RF environment. The ADC will overload in the
presence of strong signals, however, unless you pad the signal from the
IF. I assume this would result in a flat line on the display at the top.
There is the chance that signals outside the display width could cause
interference as well, since the only filtering would be the bandpass
filters in the K3, and a 3-pole filter on the input of the softrock, but
they would have to be very strong.
Adding some attenuation between the K3 and softrock (beyond what would
be needed for proper interfacing to the K3 IF output), would help
protect the ADC in the soundcard, but you would lose some sensitivity.
The amount would depend on the strength of the ADC. Depending on
soundcard, 10 dB would give you a range of about -10dBm to -110 /
-120dBm between MDS and 1dB compression point... a bit less if the upper
limit is more stringent. This should be fine for most
locations/situations, although I can think of a couple very specific
exceptions.
To sum up, I would expect that you would spend about $250-400 for this
setup, assuming you already have the PC, and depending on the level of
sound card you use, with the high end required for a BW > ~45 kHz. You
would not have the ability to point and click to jump to a signal like
the Z90/91 offers... although it's possible that some enterprising soul
could add this feature to one of the open source SDR apps I suppose. And
you don't have much portability.
73,
Larry N8LP
Jack Smith wrote:
A 192 kb/s sample rate gives you a usable bandwidth (Nyquist = sample
rate/2) of 96 KHz, assuming a brick-wall anti-alias filter. More
likely, the usable bandwidth will be about 80 KHz with a practical
anti-alias filter.
Jack
.
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