Example of RF amplifier for DAB

Interesting ? Yes but... before thinking to use this kind of gizmo after the USRP, the RF signal need some manipulations, avoiding any disturbance on the radio spectrum.

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Output Spectrum

Usually when somebody need to transmit easily voices information on the radio spectrum he use an oscillator directly modulated and tuned on the working frequency. To avoid unwanted signals outside the working band (harmonics) low pass filters are mainly used after this oscillator and amplifiers.

It is also possible to use RF mixer to up convert the frequency from the modulated oscillator on a higher band when intermediate line is used to carry the RF signal from the modulator stage to the up-converter / power amplifier. (This mainly used on Terrestrial link, Uplink Earth Station, Vsat terminals) This allow also frequency agility on a larger band. In this case a mix of high pass and low pass or bandpass filters are used to keep the energy where it should be !

USRP boards propose different band coverage and use direct output from the DA or converted RF spectrum. As we use digital modulation (OFDM in this case... including amplitude modulation) we need also a good linearity on the RF chain to avoid distortion. The amplifiers will not work near their saturation point but where we get the best linearity. (I & Q frame are send from the PC to the USRP FPGA, after computing, signal is applied to DA's to generate the modulation. In the case of RF mixing for band conversion we should also ensure that we do not introduce too much additional phase noise (mainly from the up-converter local oscillator)

Basic TX

USRP with BasicTX

Test with the BasicTX, On the picture you see the board installed on the USRP TX A port (Upper right) This board take the signal from the DA's and provide the output on SMA connectors via a transformer. The don't use any actives components, you get after the transformer what you get directly from the DA. When we generate a signal on this board we have measured a total power of 18 uW. (with 50 ohm load 0 dB of gain on the gnuradio module)

As we use one DA from the TX A port we get a real signal at the output, meaning that you get every harmonics and image frequency till they go in the noise floor (bandwidth of the board transformer)

This is typically how looks the output of the BasicTX when you analyze the spectrum. Note the red marker showing the desired working frequency in the Band III (exact value: 12C @227.360 Mhz during the measurement). To filter the lower and stronger peaks will required more than 80 dB of attenuation and the same for the next upper peak ! The picture show the spectrum from 0 to 750 Mhz

So ! this will required further filtering before applying any pre amplifier stage... tbc