[amsat-bb] Small Sat SDR Paper + Outernet + BY70-1

[John Toscano]

I found the paper on CPU & FPGA performance in satellite communications to
be very interesting, and mostly very well-done. However there seemed to be
some obvious places in the paper where the authors could have better
conveyed their findings.

   1. Throughout the paper, they never identify the x86 processor that was
   present in their Dell Optiplex 745 computer. Several different Intel x86
   processors have been used in that machine, including Pentium D and Core 2
   Duo processors. I presume it was the latter.
   2. Figures 8, 10, and 11 would have been much improved if they showed a
   fourth data series, namely the Cortex A9 CPU % Consumption (Figures 8, 10)
   and Success Rate (Figure 11) when assisted by moving critical code to the
   FPGA from the GPP.
   3. I find Table VII mostly impossible to understand. In the first two
   columns, I don't understand what the percentage numbers are referring to.
   And the tabulated items under Post Implementation are not defined, and seem
   to be a mix of physical circuits in the FPGA (such as Flip Flops) and
   software subroutines (DSP48). It is poor practice to use descriptors such
   as "LUT", "MemoryLUT", "BRAM", "DSP48", "BUFG", and "MMCM" which are never
   defined in the paper. Without knowing what a "MMCM" is, I can barely
   appreciate that it stayed at 50% (half of what, I am uncertain) before and
   after FPGA implementation of critical software routines, giving an Overhead
   of 0% (no change). And the pictures of "Implementation on FPGA Fabric" are
   meaningless without any explanation of what they are and what they mean.
   The only thing I can offer as assistance in interpreting this table is to
   remind the reader that the dual Cortex A9 CPUs of the Zedboard are actually
   implemented using a portion of the FPGA. Therefore a pure GPP software
   implementation still uses some of the FPGA. What fraction of the FPGA
   capacity is consumed by the dual A9 implementation? What fraction of the
   FPGA capacity is consumed by the A9 implementation plus the software SDR
   implementation? What fraction of the FPGA capacity is consumed by the A9 +
   software SDR + FPGA implementation of the SDR? I can't figure this out from
   the paper.
   4. The purpose of the paper, to show the improvement in functionality of
   an SDR by moving critical functions from GPP to FPGA, was accomplished in
   that it was shown that the FPGA implementation could receive more satellite
   signals concurrently at low data rates. But it appears that neither a
   dual-core A9, dual-core A9 + FPGA, nor a quad-core A15 + quad-core A7 could
   keep up with a lowly Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It seems that a ground
   station with a built-in SDR processor would do best with a modern x86
   processor rather than any of the ARM processors available at the present
   time. Given the higher power consumption of fast x86 processors than fast
   ARM processors, it may be best to handle the SDR functions in a desktop PC
   or at least in a high-end laptop PC, instead of embedding an ARM processor
   inside the ground terminal.

Anyway, that's my take on the paper. I congratulate the authors and
acknowledge their hard work. I sincerely hope that they continue their
efforts in this field. Maybe we should personally invite them to join the
team working on the AMSAT Ground Terminal for future digital satellites
using the "5 and Dime" frequencies (5 GHz up and 10 GHz down).

John Toscano, W0JT/5
AMSAT LM

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 2:49 PM, M5AKA via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
wrote:

> Mamatha R. Maheshwarappa 2E0CZO has released her paper “Improvements in
> CPU & FPGA Performance for Small Satellite SDR Applications”
> https://amsat-uk.org/2017/01/10/small-satellite-sdr-paper/
>
> BY70-1 FM transponder contact video
> https://amsat-uk.org/2016/12/30/by70-1-fm-transponder-contact/
>
> Chertsey Radio Club article - Getting started with FM satellites http://
> chertseyradioclub.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/getting-started-
> with-fm-satellites.html
>
> Video of Daniel Estévez EA4GPZ / M0HXM talk - Reverse Engineering the
> Outernet - at Chaos Communication Congress #33c3
> http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2017/january/reverse-
> engineering-%20the-outernet.htm
> Blog update http://destevez.net/2017/01/updated-format-for-
> outernet-ldp-protocol/
>
> ITF-2 CubeSat 437.525 MHz to deploy from ISS Monday
> https://www.facebook.com/amsatuk/posts/1269720816404298
>
>
> 73 Trevor M5AKA
> ----
> AMSAT-UK http://amsat-uk.org/
> Twitter https://twitter.com/AmsatUK
> Facebook https://facebook.com/AmsatUK
> YouTube https://youtube.com/AmsatUK
> ----
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions
> expressed
> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of
> AMSAT-NA.
> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
> Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
>