SDR receiver compatible with HPSDR

Introduction

This SDR receiver emulates a Hermes module with eight receivers. It may be useful for projects that require eight receivers compatible with the programs that support the HPSDR/Metis communication protocol.

The HPSDR/Metis communication protocol is described in the following documents:

• Metis - How it works
• HPSDR - USB Data Protocol

This application requires the Zmod Digitizer module to be connected to the ZMOD A connector of the USB104 A7 board.

Hardware

The FPGA configuration consists of eight identical digital down-converters (DDC). Their structure is shown in the following diagram:

The I/Q data rate is configurable and four settings are available: 48, 96, 192, 384 kSPS.

The tunable frequency range covers from 0 Hz to 61.44 MHz.

The projects/sdr_receiver_hpsdr directory contains two Tcl files: block_design.tcl, rx.tcl. The code in these files instantiates, configures and interconnects all the needed IP cores.

The projects/sdr_receiver_hpsdr/filters directory contains the source code of the R script used to calculate the coefficients of the FIR filters.

Software

The projects/sdr_receiver_hpsdr/server directory contains the source code of the UDP server (sdr-receiver-hpsdr.py) that receives control commands and transmits the I/Q data streams to the SDR programs.

This SDR receiver should work with the programs that support the HPSDR/Metis communication protocol. It was tested with the following programs:

• CW Skimmer Server
• extio-iw0hdv and SDR#

Getting started

• Download and unpack the release zip file.
• Copy the contents of the zip file to a directory.
• Install the WinUSB driver for the USB interface of the USB104 A7 board (USB ID 0403:6010 and 0403:6014) using Zadig.
• Run the sdr-receiver-hpsdr.exe program.
• Press the Start button.
• Install and run one of the HPSDR programs.

Running CW Skimmer Server and Reverse Beacon Network Aggregator

• Install CW Skimmer Server.
• Copy HermesIntf.dll to the CW Skimmer Server program directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Afreet\SkimSrv).
• Install Reverse Beacon Network Aggregator.
• Start CW Skimmer Server, configure frequencies and your call sign.
• Start Reverse Beacon Network Aggregator.

Building from source

The structure of the source code and of the development chain is described at this link.

Setting up the Vitis and Vivado environment:

source /opt/Xilinx/Vitis/2020.2/settings64.sh

Cloning the source code repository:

git clone https://github.com/pavel-demin/usb104-a7-notes
cd usb104-a7-notes

Building sdr_receiver_hpsdr.bit:

make NAME=sdr_receiver_hpsdr bit

Configuring the FPGA:

make NAME=sdr_receiver_hpsdr run