DttSP Project

 

DttSP is an open source project started by Dr.Frank Brickle and Dr. Robert McGwier of the DTTS Microwave Society to provide code to be used in various DSP projects with an emphasis on Software Defined and Cognitive Radio.

 

You can reach DTTS Microwave to discuss this project via Frank Brickle or Bob McGwier or via snail-mail:

 

 

The DTTS Microwave Society

6 Kathleen Place

Bridgewater, NJ 08807

 

 

DttSP implements the basic modulation, demodulation, signal conditioning, and synchronization processes required to operate a high performance transceiver using DSP as the detection and synthesis stages.  While the development is done primarily on Linux, the code is also available for use as a Visual Studio 6 or Visual Studio 2003 project for Microsoft Windows®.  It uses FFTW for much of the heavy lifting.  On Windows it uses Pthreads-Win32 for rational thread synchronization under Win32.  DttSP is written in ANSI-C.  The basic architectural decisions include the use of jack as the interface to the Linux sound systems (ALSA, OSS, and PortAudio). With the use of PortAudio, the code should be portable to Mac OS X® (not done yet, but it will be supported immediately in the CVS tree).


One of the major design goals of DttSP was to provide an SDR core that was both efficient and capable of being integrated into a number of different application environments. For example, the full SDR functionality can be controlled and run either locally, via a graphical console, or remotely, over a network, without changes or reconfiguration. Since DttSP is directly aimed at being integrated into practical applications, a high premium was also placed on reliability and security. There are several  innovations in the design meant to keep system overhead low. One such instance is the extensive use of ringbuffers residing in memory-mapped files, which provide fast one-way communication between user processes without handshaking or intervention of the operating system.

 

DttSP is the digital signal processing powering the SDR-1000: Flex Radio and we are contributors active contributors to the open source project associated with it.

 

Who are the founders?  Well, both are accurately called polymaths, but here are some details:

 

Dr. Frank Brickle, the lead architect of DttSP, pursues a dual career in musical composition and technology. He has a Ph.D. in Music from Princeton University. Along with musical work since childhood, he has been involved in signal processing and computer science since 1970, beginning his love-hate relationship with computers in 1965. His compositions have been performed in concerts and broadcasts around the world. He was director of the 2003 George Antheil Festival, an international event devoted to the music of that great American composer, who was also the patented inventor of Spread Spectrum. Currently Frank is Secretary of the Composers Guild of New Jersey. On the technical front, he has been the developer or co-developer of applications and systems in a number of different areas in communications. He is the author of many musical and technical publications, including “Automatic Signal Classification for Software Defined Radios” in the November/December 2003 issue of QEX. Frank was first licensed as a radio amateur in 1962 as WB2GRK, fell inactive after college, and returned with a vengeance in 2001 as an unregenerate brasspounder with a new call, AB2KT. He is a member of ARRL and an active participant in ARES/RACES.

 

Dr. Robert McGwier has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University and works for the Center for Communications Research as a member of the research staff. His thesis, “Regular Perturbations and Nonlinear Filtering”, sprang from his interest in phase-locked loops and range-rate orbit determination.  Well-known as N4HY, he has been an amateur radio operator since 1964. Bob was the cofounder of the AMSAT-TAPR DSP project with Tom Clark, W3IWI.  Bob is author of the DSP code in the old AEA DSP1232 and DSP2232 multimode controllers. Timewave offered these units.  He was a designer and builder on the AMSAT Microsat’s and participated in the Amsat-Oscar 13 and Amsat-Oscar 40 projects.  Bob is the current Vice President for Engineering for AMSAT and  is currently working on the AMSAT-NA Eagle project on several software-defined radio transponders, the AMSAT-DL Phase3 Express project where he is bringing up IPS for the onboard computer and will author the software-defined radio for low speed telecommand on the AMSAT-DL upcoming projects.  Bob is currently chairman of the ARRL Software-Defined Radio Working Group and a member of the  High Speed Multimedia working group.  He is Bob is a member of ARRL, AMSAT, TAPR, Packrats (V.P.) and the Frankford Radio Club.

 

 

CVS instructions for Linux and Windows

 

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