[amsat-bb] Re: Full band transverters for satellite operations?

[Tony Langdon]

At 08:59 PM 6/14/2007, Grant Hodgson wrote:
>The uWSDR (Microwave SDR) will not need a transverter, it will provide a
>transceiever operating at the frequency of interest (144, 422, 1268,
>2400 etc).  It will cover the whole of each band - i.e. 1240-1300MHz.
>Full duplex cross-band products such as L/S are planned specifically for
>satellite use.  The hardware is still in development, but progress is
>being made, and software can be downloaded now and used either in
>simulator mode or with a Softrock.  The hardware should be available
>long in advance of the next HEO launch.

Neat.  Hopefully I can look at getting the uWSDR going once I get my 
HPSDR up and running.  Just a comment.  Firstly, I notice there are 
plans for Rx only on 2400 MHz.  I should point out that the VK 
terrestrial weak signal segment is 2403 MHz, so if I was to obtain a 
13cm module, I would want Tx and RX on the 2400-2404 MHz segment (Rx 
for 2401, Tx/Rx for 2403).

I'm also interested how the Ethernet and UDP/IP interface and 
communications goes.  All other SDRs I've seen use a soundcard(ish), 
USB2 or Firewire interface.


>Detailed system simulations show that the RF performance will be as good
>as, and hopefully significantly better than, a transverter/IF combination.
>
>More details on the uWSDR website - fell free to join the project if you
>so desire, any extra help would be appreciated.

Looks interesting.  I can see my future is SDR for the shack. :) One 
aspect of ham SDR development so far which I really like is that the 
various SDRs being designed are using both open hardware and open 
source software, so there's scope for integrating them all together 
and mixing and matching the software packages as the end user sees 
fit.  Or one might want to indulge in a little hacking and improve 
(hopefully! ;) ) the state of the art.

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com