Homebrew RF Test Equipment and Software


Posted on Feb 6, 2014

This section will list several projects which will allow you to build your own RF design test equipment. Microwave construction techniques and basic electronic skills will be required on some projects, but the tools you can make will equal what the so-called `professionals` use. We modified the iwconfig command included with Jean Tourrilhes` Wirele


Homebrew RF Test Equipment and Software
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ss Tools for Linux slightly to help with the wireless link setup and alignment. Here is what the original output of the command iwconfig eth1 would look like: Here is a screen shot of the modified version. It displays the same information, just with some lame ANSI colors and a bar graph for signal strength. I`m not sure if it`s entirely accurate, so use at your own risk. You can pick this version up here. There is also a version for the 915 MHz WaveLANs. It also includes the perl script pinger. pl, ( screen shot ) you can use this as a signal meter to help align the antennas in your network. It`s just a wrapper around the ping command to display the millisecond output with an ANSI bar graph. It also has an option for using the `say` command from the rsynth package to speak the ping millisecond value to you. That`s useful for when you`re hanging from a tower trying to align antennas. Another method of testing the received signal strength on a Symphony based wireless network is with a homebrew signal meter. The National LMX2240 Intermediate Frequency Receiver has a certain pin called "RSSI Out". RSSI stands for relative signal strength indicator and supplies a voltage output that is an indication of the received signal strength. On a weakly received signal the voltage output of the RSSI is small and on a strong signal it`s large. Unfortunately, this output is only on during the receive portion and off during transmit. This...




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