rh.MSDD

REDHAWK rh.MSDD

## Table of Contents

• Description
• Properties
• Installation
• Troubleshooting

Description

The REDHAWK rh.MSDD device is a FRONTEND 2.0 Interfaces (FEI) compliant device for the Midwest Microwave MSDD-3000/6000/0660 series receiver. The rh.MSDD device is written in the Python programming language and communicates with receiver using the host’s network interface. The rh.MSDD properties described below determine the connection and tuner output configuration the MSDD radio. The command formats and descriptions are documented in the MSDD API document from Midwest Microwave Systems.

The rh.MSDD device is meant to be configured a single RF flow. This is controlled using the ‘msdd::receiver_id’ property at device startup. This property will be referenced to filter out the MSDD tuner modules from the specified RCV module instance. For single channel MSDD radios this value will be the default to RCV:1. All WBDDC and NBDDC tuner modules from this RCV module instance will configured as Frontend tuner devices. For dual Channel MSDD radios, you can use the rh.MSDD device to process a single RF flow (i.e. ‘RCV:1’) on the radio. If you want to process both RCV modules on a dual channel radio you will need to use the rh.MSDD_Controller device.

The rh.MSDD will communicate to the MSDD radio using the msdd property structure at device start up. The following properties are used during start up to configure the MSDD radio.

• msdd : Communications context and Board module’s (BRD) reference clock
• time_of_day : Time of Day (TOD) module configuration
• block_tuner_output, tuner_output : Configure OUTPUT Modules (OUT) assigned to WBDDC and NBDDC hardware tuners
• block_psd_output : Configure OUTPUT Modules (OUT) assigned to FFT modules (FFT) of controlling allocations.

Once the rh.MSDD device has completed initialization, the following run time properties will affect tuner allocations, tuner gain and PSD calculations.

• frontend_tuner_allocation : FEI allocation request structure
• frontend_listener_allocation : FEI listener allocation request structure
• advanced : Controls how hardware tuners respond to FEI allocation requests. Sets threshold values that are monitored to determine if the MSDD radio is in BUSY state. Enables FFT channels for controlling allocations.
• gain_configuration : Defined gain settings that can be assigned during an tuner allocations for RCV, WBDDC, and MBDDC modules.
• psd_configuration : FFT module settings applied to a controlling allocation when FFT channels are enabled (advanced.enable_fft_channels)

The following run time properties describe the state of the MSDD radio and the frontend tuner devices associated with the MSDD tuner module hardware.

• frontend_tuner_status : FEI tuner status structure (readonly) describes the current state of each tuner being managed by rh.MSDD
• connectionTable : Maps connection identifiers to stream identifiers, use to filter out messages to specific connections
• msdd_status : Provides the current state of the MSDD radio (readonly)

Properties

msdd

The msdd structure defines the connection, reference clock, and receiver_identifier properties for the MSDD device.

time_of_day

The time_of_day structure controls the configuration of the MSDD Time of Day module (TOD). The state of the Time of Day module is reported in the msdd_status structure.

advanced

The advanced structured property defines a mapping of MSDD tuner modules to FRONTEND tuner types, defines thresholds to control device busy state, enables/disables FFT channels, and controls the use of SWDDC channels for NBDDC modues to provide additional decimation.

tuner_output

The tuner_output sequence contains the tuner_output_definition structure that defines the stream output configuration from a specific MSDD digital tuner. If tuner_output and block_tuner_output values are defined, the tuner_output properties override the block_tuner_output information for a specific tuner.

block_tuner_output

The block_tuner_output sequence contains the block_tuner_output_definition structure that defines the stream output configuration for a block of MSDD tuners. See tuner_output property for precedence of stream output configuration settings.

block_psd_output

The block_psd_output sequence contains the block_psd_output_definition that defines the output stream configuration for a block of MSDD FFT channels.

psd_configuration

The psd_configuration structure defines the FFT module settings. These settings are applied to the FFT module when controlling allocation is requested and advanced.enable_fft_channels is True.

gain_configuration

The gain_configuration structure controls the gain setting for each MSDD tuner module type.

msdd_status

The msdd_status structure defines the set of readonly properties that define the state of the MSDD receiver. This structure is updated after initialization, allocation requests and deallocation requests.

FRONTEND::tuner_status

The FRONTEND::tuner_status structure defines the FRONTEND tuner status properties for each defined tuner. The standard tuner status properties are defined in the REDHAWK documentation. This table describes the additional properties defined for each MSDD tuner.

Installation

The following procedure explains how to install rh.MSDD from source. rh.MSDD is one of the REDHAWK Basic Devices. For information about how to install the REDHAWK Basic Devices from RPMs, refer to the REDHAWK Manual.

1. Ensure OSSIEHOME and SDRROOT are both set.

$ source /etc/profile.d/redhawk.sh
$ source /etc/profile.d/redhawk-sdrroot.sh

1. To build and install rh.MSDD, enter the following commands from the root directory of the assets repository:

$ cd $(find . -name MSDD)
$ ./build.sh install

Troubleshooting

The msdd property is used to setup the network connectivity between the MSDD hardware and host computer running the REDHAWK rh.MSDD device. Set the msdd::ip_address and msdd::port properties for the MSDD receiver you are connecting.

Besides the number of available tuners, the rh.MSDD device will monitor the radio’s CPU percent load metrics to determine if the device’s usage state. The If the value from the CPL command exceeds the advanced::max_cpu_load the device will be put into a BUSY state. This state is evaluated before and after each tuner allocation/deallocation request.

The rh.MSDD device will track the output bit rate from the MSDD’s radios network interface. Before each tuner allocation request, the expected output rate will be determine from the current allocations and the new request. If the new requests exceeds the ‘advanced::max_nic_percentage` for the interface the allocation will fail.

It has been observed from testing with various FPGA loads on different MSDD hardware, that allocations of WBDDC and NBDDC modules will cause a delay in processing commands. When this occurrs, the rh.MSDD device will perform a limited retry sequence when processing commands. These events will generate detailed stdout logging messages that are not controllable through normal logging configuration. The net affect would be failed tuner allocation requests and enabled BUSY states, due to invalid response messaging. When these events are observed, there are two methods to diagnose messaging to and from the radio. You can enable the logging port traffic on the radio with the following command:

nc -u <ip addres of radio> 24

This will trigger the LOG module on the radio to report the sequence of messages the radio receives and transmits. Along with this information you can use the linux tcpdump utility to track the same actvity on the host:

sudo tcpdump -i <host nic connected to radio>  port <port number observed from LOG output>

This should allow you to determine if the radio is responding with the proper messages to the host computer.