Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Expected behavior during underruns

[Josh Blum]

> Yes, I timestamp every packet sent by the send-function but my
> observation shows that the underrun realignment is not automatic. I
> also think that the underrun recovery works for packets, but it
> doesn't work for fragments of packets.
> 

Correct. Its at the packet level (thats UDP packet level 360~ish samples).

> Consider the case when you have a packet P1 with timestamp 3.0 and
> the number of samples are equal to 1 second in transmission duration.
> P1 is then fragmented into several fragments by the UHD, call them
> f1,f2,f3,f4,f5. The timestamp and start_of_burst is set at f1 in P1
> correct? And the remaining fragments doesn't get any timestamp and
> are set to be transmitted immediate, correct? The f1 will block the
> rest of the fragments until the usrp2 time is equal to the timestamp
> of f1 and then all of the fragments will be transmitted in a sequence
> if we do not get an underrun (1).
> 
> If we instead get an underrun after that the first fragment is moved
> to the usrp2 either nothing or a CW will be transmitted for a while
> between f1 and f2 which will introduce an unknown and unwanted offset
> (2). To eliminate this offset the host can drop f2 and timestamp all
> of the fragments so that the fragments in the end of the transmission
> happen at the expected time (3).
> 
> f1,f2,f3,f4,f5                (1) expected sequence f1,U ,f2,f3,f4,f5         
> (2) with
> underrun f1,U ,f3,f4,f5               (3) with underrun and dropping
> 
> As we are talking about the fragments of a packet now, this must be
> handled in vrt_packet_handler.hpp and/or io_impl.cpp.
> 

I think you will find that hardware recovery is going to be faster then
anything you you manipulate in software.

I think the problem is that you are sending very large bursts with only
the first packet having a time stamp. Can you try your own fragmentation
into smaller sub-packets, each sub-packet with a timestamp?
tx_timed_samples.cpp has an example of fragmenting a buffer into smaller
packets.

> http://code.ettus.com/redmine/ettus/projects/uhd/repository/revisions/71e1763332141603e9edba097fd19b00e9a76ab8/entry/host/lib/transport/vrt_packet_handler.hpp
>
>  Look at the state SEND_MODE_FULL_BUFF at line 414  //calculate new
> flags for the fragments 427: if_packet_info.has_tsi =
> metadata.has_time_spec  and first_fragment; 428:
> if_packet_info.has_tsf = if_packet_info.has_tsi; 429:
> if_packet_info.sob     = metadata.start_of_burst and first_fragment; 
> 430: if_packet_info.eob     = metadata.end_of_burst   and
> final_fragment;
> 

Correct, this could be modified to time-stamp every packet in the burst.
But a pain to do as the code there knows nothing about the sample rate.

-Josh