Signal interruption on high sampling rate

Discussions related to schematic capture, PCB layout, signal integrity, and RF development
Post Reply
Grivus
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 17, 2024 6:38 pm

Signal interruption on high sampling rate

Post by Grivus »

Hi!
My bladeRF 2.0 micro xA4 started to act weird suddenly: I can see that it receives a signal fine for example on 10MHz sampling rate, but it became worse and worse with its increasing.
My setup is: powerful PC with top i9 cpu, bladerf connected via usb3 (both power and data), only RX1 input is used (I've tried also RX2, the same problem), antenna is OK (checked with another devices).
For testing purposes I'm using simple radio frequencies with WFM, and checking how good sound is and what is on the waterfall (sdr++ used for this).
It is ok on 10Mhz(both sound and waterfall), and degrade with increasing sampling rate, so on 60 there is no visible signal or meaningful sound at all (tried different gains, min/max etc), and on 20Mhz there is some signal, however it is so bad that you could barely guess there is some radio playing.
This started from nowhere after several months of good work, without any visible physical damage or settings changing, I've already checked firmware, fpga, calibration number, all looks fine.

Could it be a powering problem (should I try to power it with psu)?
What could I do to diagnose this issue better?
Post Reply