Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] tx_empty in fpga

[Matt Ettus]

Eric Blossom wrote:
>
>
> This could work, with two caveats:
>
>   (1) you're stuffing 0's into the input of the signal processing
>       chain, instead of handing the underrun at the output of the
>       signal processing chain.   With the existing code, you're
>       probably OK, but in general, if the idea is to zero the output
>       when there's no input, I'd prefer to do it closer to the DACs.
>       [ Don't let this comment stop you from trying this ;) ]
>   

Have to disagree with you here.  The best place to do this is before the
signal processing chain, for exactly the reasons you state below...

>   (2) You're going to get the equivalent of a "key click".  That is,
>       wide band harmonics in the freq domain from the discontinuity in the
>       time domain (step function).  It would be better to ramp the last
>       value down, say be doing the equivalent of an arithmetic shift right
>       by 2.  This really ought to be done by the code that feeds the DACs.
>   

The key clicks will get filtered if you do this before the upconverter. 
They'll still be there, but they'll only be as wide as the baseband
bandwidth instead of the full 32 MHz.

> I think a better place to fix this would be to filter the output of
> tx_a_a, tx_b_a, tx_a_b and tx_b_b in usrp_std.v based on their
> previous values and the delayed value of tx_empty.  

You don't need this filter if you do it before the interpolators.

> I believe that a
> delay on the order of 12 clocks is about right.  You'll need to count
> pipeline stages through the tx path to get it right.
>   

The delay through the interpolators is variable -- it depends on the
intepolation ratio.  Again, this is why this should be done before the
interpolators.

Matt