[TenTec] Shootout at OK Corral

[tongaloa]

John Rippey wrote:

>
>
> The bad news is that transceivers using these chips cannot be built on 
> the cheap. The chips are expensive, and even more expensive are the 
> software design teams that make them work.


they can be built dirt cheap
it's the software that eats up the man hours
as more software tools are made available, to enhance chip sales, the 
software
costs will come down.

Software is appearing from other sources as well.
linrad, gnuradio, and the SDR1000 (source included) come to mind.

Analog devices has some nice parts that digitize at RF and provide
baseband IQ output. IIRC they max out at 14 bits last I looked and can
samply at pretty high rates. 300MHz IIRC with 70MHz output
bandwidths.

-bob