[Discuss-gnuradio] [maybe little offtopic] configurable digital RF tx/rx

[Pedro Díaz Jiménez]

Hi there,

First of all, I apologize for posting a somewhat offtopic post here, since 
what I want to ask about is not directly related to GNUradio. Reading the 
mail archives I got the feeling that there are quite a lot of folks here that 
have a good understanding of software radio

I am a student working on my master's thesis. The research area for the thesis 
is ad-hoc networks, more concretely the MAC level. 

I am looking for some kind of card/peripheral for digital RF communications. 
The card should allow configuration (by software) of:
 - Base frequency (preferably in the VHF range)
 - Codification/modulation

From my (limited) understanding this could be implemented  in software radio, 
but then all the codification/decodification of the digital signal would need 
to be done by the computer (which would mean a lot of work that is out of the 
scope of my thesis, and also a possible loss of performance compared to a HW 
implementation, right?). I've also seen a lot of "radio-modem" products out 
there, but they don't seem to be what I'm looking for.

To recapitulate: I'm looking for a device that would let me:
 - Configure it to tx/rx in a range of frequencies
 - Configure how the digital signal is modulated in the analog carrier
 (maybe from a set of choices)
 - Send/Receive data from/to the host computer more or less easily
 (easy being defined as me not having to implement a modulation
 technique in software)

 So, any of you guys know of anything remotely similar to what I'm 
describing?. I've googled and googled without any significant results; all I 
got was either radio modem stuff or either software radio stuff. I (think) 
that I'm looking for something "between" these two.

Also, going more on-topic: An alternative would be to use gnuradio, provided 
that someone already has implemented some modulation technique for 
transmitting/receiving data. I've seen some mailing list posts about 
implementing OFDM for gnuradio, but couldn't find anything specific apart 
from these posts.

Any kind of help/orientation/pointer to vendor/tip would be greatly 
appreciated. 


Thanks!
 Pedro


-- 
Pedro Diaz  

http://www.cavecanen.org/

PGP/GPG Key ID: 1024D/E118C651

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers"
   -- Pablo Picasso