Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Why Isn't GNU Radio Used More?

[Jeff Brower]

Martin-

> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 09:07:38AM -0500, Jeff Brower wrote:
>> Martin-
>>
>> > To a non GPL-philic, non-nerd, why choose GNU Radio? There is no reason:
>> > - Matlab is generally free of charge for universities
>> > - Matlab is used by the industry
>> > - Matlab is better documented and has a wider user base
>> > - Simulink has more blocks already incorporated
>> > - Matlab/Simulink has a much wider applicability outside realtime DSP
>> >
>> > Here at CEL, the majority of student's projects are done using
>> > Matlab/Simulink.
>>
>> In that case, what hardware are your students using with MATLAB/Simulink?
>
> Most use USRPs, but we also have some Lyrtech SFF SDRs.

If this can be generalized, then the academic situation seems good then.  Matt 
has solved the foremost problem:  get
hardware into circulation and bring in some revenue.  Then the question is how 
to gain wider academic acceptance on
the software side.  Since Mathworks and NI are arch rivals, I would think NI is 
looking at how to do this and giving
Matt the assistance he needs.  Maybe better Win support, as others have 
mentioned.  Maybe adding things that leverage
the hardware and the student version of Simulink isn't going to do, such as 
user-defined Verilog code blocks that run
on the FPGA (and are easy to use from a Win GUI).

-Jeff