Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Strategy advice

[Johnathan Corgan]

Steven Clark wrote:

> We could try and normalize the complex product, but the universe
> explodes if it has length 0 (divide by 0).

What do you want the answer to be in this case?  You will only have a
zero length vector from the conjugate multiplication if one of the
original vectors is also zero length.  So the angle difference between
them is undefined anyway.

One approach then would be to ensure this never happens, i.e., add a
small epsilon to each input stream, and make epsilon small enough to not
sufficiently impact the results for "typical" input values.  Normalizing
the conjugate product will then give you the cosine as the real value,
as you mentioned.  Or, you could just divide the abs value into the real
value of the product, and avoid the extra calculation of the normed
imaginary part which you are going to throw away.

You could do this from Python with existing blocks.

> Do any basic math/trig functions (cos, atan2, sqrt, etc) exist at the
> python block level, or do I have to delve into C to use them?
> Makefiles are scary :(

You'll pretty much need write your own low-level block if you want to
use this approach.

An alternative is to step back and look at the bigger picture of what
you are trying to do.

What do you need the cosine of the angle difference for?  Does it really
need to be normalized?  Is there a way to use the conjugate product
itself downstream in your calculation?  That is, can you "stay" in the
rectangular representation instead of going to sin/cos?

Is there a way you can guarantee the input streams never have zero norm?

-- 
Johnathan Corgan
Corgan Enterprises LLC
http://corganenterprises.com