But the words from Expert Electronics, a Russia-based company which previously has made SDR transceivers and receivers mainly with the radio amateur in mind. This one looks suspiciosly similar to the 8-bit dongles available on eBay, that are little more than toys. The ColibriNANO however will deliver up to 3 MHz of I/Q sampling, 14-bit ADC (similar to the Perseus), and a -130 dBm noise floor (presumed CW @500 Hz although not specified). It will handle a 74 mV (around -9 dBm) signal before going into saturation. It will be happy with a USB 2.0 port. It's EUR 299, one-third the price of a Perseus and half the price of a CloudIQ or FDM-S2. At 1/10 or maybe 1/20 of the size.
These figures are in fact very good, at least on paper.
So the big Q is: Can a dongle match a Perseus, a CloudIQ, an Elad FDM-S2, a Winradio G33DDC, a QS1R?
Perhaps we will know a couple of Fridays from now. Of course I've ordered one. I admit I'm predjudiced. It's "too small". You can't make an excellent SDR in the form of a USB dongle. Or can you? After all, miniaturization is going on everywhere else, so why not in the SDR world?
We'll see!
No comments:
Post a Comment