[Premium-Rx] Hello and what is the best receiver?

Tue Feb 28 10:33:28 EST 2006

Welcome to the group Adam,

I think I was the second person to buy one of the TCI
receivers that you and Martha had for sale on the e
place, John Collins just beat me out on bidding for
the first one. You and Martha were very helpful in
getting me going on the receiver. 

As far as state of the art goes what you were selling
(TenTec 331 and TCI RX)are not a bad start as a
development platform and documentation for the TCI
receiver has been fairly easy to get. Other stuff that
is considered state of the art would be from companies
such as DRS (formerly Watkins Johnson)but I don't know
of anybody that has access to the documentation for
the latest stuff. If you want to start from scratch
decide what your system requirements are going to be,
dynamic range, maximum input power etc and then select
an A-D that will fullfill those requirements, then it
is a "simple" matter of designing a front end, mixer,
synthesizer and AGC system to feed into the A-D. I
hope you are good at frequency synthesizer design
otherwise there may be quite a learning curve ahead of
you but think fractional N and I believe there are a
number of vendors of fractional N chip sets out there
now which should help simplify things, you could also
look into DDS but I think fractional N is better. QEX
has had a number of good articles on SDR design, also
check out this article from Brad Brannon at Analog
Devices
www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Technical_Articles/480501640radio101.pdf

hope this is helpful and good luck in your project.

Maybe sometime we can chat about wireless data
networking, something I have been involved in
designing for the last 10 years.

Mark Donaldson  WA1QHQ

--- Adam Harriman <road33 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Group,
> 
> First I would like to introduce myself, I am Adam
> Harriman. I am an amateur
> extra - N4ZSM and I have been licensed since I was
> 14.  I feel lucky to have
> a wife who also has a license KG4UGB.  We are
> located near Melbourne FL,
> where the storms hit.  We used our VHF radios during
> the storm and were
> grateful for being amateurs.
> 
> Our two new kids have taken most of our leisure time
> these days.
> 
> The latest is 14 days old,
>
http://www.aharriman.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1773
> 
> The other joy is a almost 2.
>
http://www.aharriman.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=635
> 
> I love my kids. Ok so this is a radio list back to
> radios.
> 
>  I enjoyed radios so much that I have made it my
> career.  I got my start in
> antennas, the wonderful world of hidden antennas for
> "non-descriptive" use.
>  I then moved into RF design early in my career.
> Shortly afterwards I joined
> a startup which was using an HF system for tracking
> trucks.  After that I
> started working with 802.11 where I did everything
> from reference radios
> which were put into IBM, Dell, Linksys, Dlink and
> Apple. Later I became a
> voting member of 802.11 and assisted with the
> development of the standard.
>   I also designed a few last mile wireless internet
> devices based on
> everything from IS95, to WCA and MMDS.    Lately I
> have been doing a wild
> number of things from 10bit ENOB 210MSP ADC to high
> performance receivers
> and LNAs. I am now the proud owner of a company
> which does custom wireless
> systems.  We do a nice mix of commercial and that
> other type of work.   I am
> trying to live the dream and so far things are going
> well.
> 
> I am the husband of martha4413 on that big website
> everyone does a good job
> not talking about. You may have noticed our
> activities there. I think we are
> done for now, I have a few left but I plan to keep
> them for myself.
> 
> I am now working with someone who would like for me
> to develop a premium HF
> receiver. This receiver will have special features
> which are not available
> in current receivers but are not very interesting to
> this group. This forced
> us into a custom design.  I am currently working on
> the feasibility stage.
> There is no guarantee this effort will continue. 
> Since this is a premium
> receiver group I think my questions are on topic, if
> I violate the rules
> apologize.
> 
> Since I am new to the list and I just may develop a
> next generation premium
> receiver, I thought it would be wise to take a look
> at the list of the best
> all time HF receivers and perhaps obtain some advise
> from the smartest most
> knowledgeable folks on the subject.
> 
> Mostly I wish to look at the design requirements and
> perhaps take a peek at
> the implementation where possible.  Does this group
> have a list of the best
> receivers? Feel free to send me your comments on the
> receivers you own.  I
> desire to know which receiver is the hands down
> best.  If there is more than
> one, I would like to know the list.  I want to take
> the list and review the
> specifications for each unit and perhaps to some
> extent the implementation.
> The goal is to make the next generation and make it
> affordable. During my
> review I may compile a list of the specifications
> and provide some analysis.
> 
> 
> In general, I would like to know what the dream
> specifications are for the
> best HF receiver. Feel free to send to me your dream
> specifications.  I
> enjoy discussions on these matters which will likely
> include the merits of
> specific circuits used to meet these requirements, I
> am most intrested in
> the first mixer selection and receiver topology but
> I would like to discuss
> all matters.
> 
> It is very likely that I can make this receiver
> available to public when I
> am done.  I would therefore like to hear about
> features which this group
> values.  This is your chance to influence the
> design.  Even if you are not a
> detailed designer, a nice feature list from users
> will be helpful.  Who
> knows you may want one of these when we are done.
> 
>  I should make it clear, we are currently only
> researching the
> technology.  Design
> efforts are not likely to start for another 4-5
> months.
> 
> I would be happy to chat with experienced folks
> about the merits of the best
> receivers.  I think it would be best to keep this
> off the list for now.  Maybe
> when I am done I will post the summarized results if
> there is enough
> interest.
> 
> I am also interested in common upgrade kits or
> special features which may be
> desirable such as 15KHz performance.  If these items
> are kept in mind from
> the start we can support them in the future.
> 
> My plans are to add ports to the receiver so that a
> standard TI 5510 eval
> board will plug into the receiver allowing anyone
> with a DSK to develop DSP
> code for the receiver. This should allow for some
> exciting development and
> collaboration on obtaining the best performance.  I
> know this is not a new
> idea, but I thought it would be good for
> experimenters to have access to
> this level.  I hope we can obtain a nice DRM radio
> out of this setup.  I am
> a big fan of open source and as much as possible I
> would like to make this
> design effort open to the public. The 5510 series of
> DSP has low power
> consumption and yet is a full featured DSP with
> plenty of horse power to do
> all HF modes.
> 
> I plan to make the receiver out of the most modern
> technology using the most
> up to date processes.
> 
> The receiver will likely not have a user control
> interface at the start.
> This means it will look like the RX331 when it first
> rolls off the
> production line. All controls will be via a
> Ethernet, serial, or USB port.
> 
> I am currently toying with the idea of using a
> 500KHz 24 bit ADC and the TI
> 5510 to do the filtering.  This should give me ample
> dynamic range and allow
> for customized filtering in the DSP depending on the
> modulation needed. We
> can add neat features for things like PSK and DRM to
> the system.  We can
> also do FFTs of the 250KHz bands. I need a solid RF
> front end to put onto
> this system.
> 
> Please feel free to send me an email with
> suggestions on circuits, radios,
> features or just plain comments.
> 
> When I am done I will likely compile my thoughts and
> analysis on each radio
> into a report which I desire to share with the
> group.
> 
> Again, hello to the group and I look forward to
> talking with the group about
> these matters.  Please feel free to respond to me
> directly with your
> comments.
> 
> Cheers and happy listening.
> 
> Adam
> 
=== message truncated ===>
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