DAB Plus Streamer

This repository contains the implementation of an SDR DAB/DAB+ streaming server based on welle.io/welle-cli (https://www.welle.io).

Table of contents

• Supported Hardware
• Building
  • General Information
  • Debian / Ubuntu Linux
• Usage
  • Backend options
  • Examples

Supported Hardware

The following SDR devices are supported

• Airspy R2 and Airspy Mini (http://airspy.com/)
• rtl-sdr (http://osmocom.org/projects/sdr/wiki/rtl-sdr)
• rtl_tcp (http://osmocom.org/projects/sdr/wiki/rtl-sdr#rtl_tcp)
• I/Q RAW file (https://www.welle.io/devices/rawfile)
• All SDR-devices that are supported by SoapySDR, gr-osmosdr and uhd. These are too many devices to list them all. To see if your SDR is supported, have a look at the lists at SoapySDR and SoapyOsmo.
  • Devices supported by gr-osmosdr are supported via SoapyOsmo
  • Devices supported by uhd are supported via SoapyUHD
  • One limitation is of course that the SDR devices must be tunable to the DAB+ frequencies.

SoapySDR Notes

LimeSDR

Connect the antenna to the RX1_W port and configured SoapySDR antenna option to LNAW. SoapySDRUtil --probe=driver=lime may show other possible options.

USRP

Configured SoapySDR driver arguments option to driver=uhd. Configure also antenna and clock source option. To list possible values for antenna and clock source use the command SoapySDRUtil --probe=driver=uhd.

Building

General Information

The following libraries and their development files are needed:

• FFTW3f
• libfaad
• librtlsdr
• libusb

Debian / Ubuntu Linux

This section shows how to compile DAB Plus Streamer on Debian or Ubuntu (tested with Ubuntu 22.04).

1. Install the essential packages for building software

sudo apt install git build-essential

2. Install the following packages

sudo apt install cmake libfaad-dev libmpg123-dev libfftw3-dev librtlsdr-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpulse-dev libsoapysdr-dev libairspy-dev libmp3lame-dev

3. Clone DAB Plus Streamer

git clone https://github.com/nRaecheR/dab_plus_streamer

4. Create a build directory inside the repository and change into it

cd dab_plus_streamer
mkdir build
cd build

5. Run CMake. To enable support for RTL-SDR add the flag -DRTLSDR=1 (requires librtlsdr) and for SoapySDR add -DSOAPYSDR=1 (requires SoapySDR compiled with support for each desired hardware, e.g. UHD for Ettus USRP, LimeSDR, Airspy or HackRF).

cmake ..

or to enable support for both RTL-SDR and Soapy-SDR:

cmake .. -DRTLSDR=1 -DSOAPYSDR=1

If you wish to use KISS FFT instead of FFTW (e.g. to compare performance), use -DKISS_FFT=ON.

6. Run make (or use the created project file depending on the selected generator)

make

7. Install it (as super-user)

make install

Usage

Receive using RTLSDR, and tune to programme:

dab_plus_streamer -c channel -p programme

Use -D to dump FIC and all programmes to files:

dab_plus_streamer -c channel -D 

Use -w to enable webserver, decode a programme on demand:

dab_plus_streamer -c channel -w port -U URL

Use -Dw to enable webserver, decode all programmes:

dab_plus_streamer -c channel -Dw port -U URL

Example: dab_plus_streamer -c 12A -w 7979 -U http://localhost:7979 enables the webserver on channel 12A, please then go to http://localhost:7979/ where you can observe all necessary details for every service ID in the ensemble, see the slideshows, stream the audio by downloading a M3U playlist and start an external application, check spectrum, constellation, TII information and CIR peak diagramme.

Backend options

-u disable coarse corrector, for receivers who have a low frequency offset.

Driver options

By default, dab_plus_streamer tries all enabled drivers in turn and uses the first device it can successfully open.

Use -F [driver][,driver_args] to select a specific driver and optionally pass arguments to the driver. This allows to select the rtl_tcp driver (which is not autodetected) and pass the hostname or IP address and port of the rtl_tcp server to it:

dab_plus_streamer -c 10B -p GRRIF -F rtl_tcp,192.168.12.34:1234
dab_plus_streamer -c 10B -P GRRIF -F rtl_tcp,my.rtl-tcp.local:9876

The rtl_sdr driver allows the selection of the RTL-SDR USB device by specifying a serial number:

dab_plus_streamer -c 10B -p GRRIF -F rtl_sdr,12345

where 12345 is the serial number of the USB device. This allows the selection of a specific USB in the case multiple devices are connected to the computer.

Examples:

dab_plus_streamer -c 10B -p GRRIF

Profiling

If you build with cmake and add -DPROFILING=ON, welle-io will generate a few .csv files and a graphviz .dot file that can be used to analyse and understand which parts of the backend use CPU resources. Use dot -Tpdf profiling.dot > profiling.pdf to generate a graph visualisation. Search source code for the PROFILE() macro to see where the profiling marks are placed.