Nuand Adopts Field-Programmable Chip In Its bladeRF Board

By Doug Lung
published

Lime Micro announced Nuand had adopted Lime for its KickStarter funded open source software defined radio platform. The Nuand SDR joins the Myriad RF and Fairwaves open source RF board launched earlier this year and this indicates that SDR technology is moving to the mainstream.

Lime said the bladeRF board is the first open source RF project to use USB 3.0. An Altera Cyclone IV FPGA and the Lime chip allow creation of exceptionally complex networks on any communications standard or frequency.

Nuand SDR boards using the Lime chip are available at http://www.nuand.com/blog/shop/. The $650 bladeRFx115 can be programmed as a custom RF mode, a GSM and LTE picocell, a GPS receiver, an ATSC transmitter, or a combination Bluetooth/WiFi client without the need for any expansion card. The frequency range is 300 MHz to 3.8 GHz.

This board could be ideal for experimenting with next generation broadcast transmission standards at a reasonable price. It looks like it could also be used as an RF recorder, making it useful for field measurements.

Doug Lung
Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.