How to turn on/off RX2 port on USRP N210

[wucc]

Hi everyone,

I'm using USRP N210 with SBX daughterboard. I need to precisely control the receiving by turning on/off the RX chain. I'm transmitting a burst signal (about tens of microseconds) periodically on TX/RX. I would like to turn off the RX chain when TX/RX is transmitting; and turn on the RX chain for listening when TX/RX finishes transmission. 

I'm wondering it that possible to do so on the devices I am using? I know one can switch the TX/RX port for transmitting and receiving by sending or not sending signals. But not sure how to turn on/off the RX2 port. 

Any information would be helpful. Thanks a lot!

Cool

[ashley_gee]

Hi wucc,

I think the Enabled Channels property in the USRP driver will do what you're looking for:

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/373380F-01/usrppropref/pniusrp_enabledchannels/

In your case, you would disable RF 1 (which is the RX2 port on your USRP NI-2922).

Hope this helps!

[wucc]

Hi Ashly,

Thank you very much for the information. 

I found few materials on the Enabled Channel property. So I may have several questions on it. 

Is this property applicable to the USRP N210? And could it be fast switched? I need not only to disable it, but also to switch between Enable and Disable at microsecond precision. Is it possible?

And if available, would you also point out which part of the USRP driver is related to the Enabled Channel property? I didn't figure it out yet...

Thank you very much!

Best,

W.

[Alex.W]

Hello wucc,

The Enabled Channel property is applicable to all National Instruments USRP devices that are supported by the NI-USRP driver, so it is a support property for your device.

The USRP N210 are all only host programmable USRPs, so the limiting factor for speed will be your host computers operating system and the speed which is can send the commands to the USRP. Something to note, is that the host operating system is Windows so there will be jitter in sending the commands since Windows is not a deterministic operating system. Microsecond accuracy is very fast for a Windows operating system which generally is closer to the millisecond range. If you need that type of accuracy it may make more sense to program with an FPGA programmable USRP.

The properties in our drivers are meant to give users advanced settings to help customize their specific program. For the Enabled Channel property it is part of the Configuration subset of settings. This can be found looking at the help documentation for the NI-USRP driver. I have also included a link to all of the niUSRP Properties.

Best,