Hi,

I believe the following paper may be of interest:
https://pubs.gnuradio.org/index.php/grcon/article/view/2

It is indicated that the B210 needs around 3.3 milliseconds minimum to
settle and it is, as you say, due to the hardware frontend. What is causing
the extra delay I can only guess but perhaps communication overhead is the
culprit.

Regards,
Sebastian




Den tis 14 apr. 2020 kl 13:40 skrev jean-michel.fri...@femto-st.fr <
jean-michel.fri...@femto-st.fr>:

> I am considering frequency sweeping a PlutoSDR and a B210, both fitted with
> AD936x RF frontends.
> As I was writing the application and reading the libuhd documentation, I
> read
> at https://files.ettus.com/manual/page_general.html
> "After tuning, the RF front-end will need time to settle into a usable
> state.
>  Typically, this means that the local oscillators must be given time to
> lock
>  before streaming begins. Lock time is not consistent; it varies depending
> upon
>  the device and requested settings. After tuning and before streaming, the
> user
>  should wait for the lo_locked sensor to become true or sleep for a
> conservative
>  amount of time (perhaps a second)."
> ... and surely enough, I can see that if I wait less than a second after
> programming
> the LO, I get inconsistent results because my LO has not stabilized. That
> is also
> true with the USRP GNU Radio source block.
> Unfortunately I want to sweep a few hundred frequencies (in several 100
> MHz range,
> so no option of playing with the I/Qs while keeping the same LO setting),
> meaning
> that the current measurement takes forever (up to 5 min) only waiting for
> the time to
> settle since data communication delay is at the moment negligible.
>
> 1/ What is the cause of this settling delay ? is it libuhd communication
> (in my
> case over USB with a B210) or the Analog Devices frontend hardware ?
> 2/ is there some "setting rule" that might lower the settling time (e.g.
> programming
> a multiple of some magic frequency that might take less time to settle) ?
> Currently
> I sweep with 1 MHz steps, ie a fraction of the sampling frequency, for
> spectra to overlap,
> but that frequency step was selected randomly and could be any better
> value if that
> could help LO stabilize "quickly".
>
> Thanks, JM
>
> --
> JM Friedt, FEMTO-ST Time & Frequency/SENSeOR, 26 rue de l'Epitaphe,
> 25000 Besancon, France
>
>

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