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BladeRF 2.0 Micro Documentation

[TOC]

Install BladeRF 2.0 Micro Libraries

You can install the BladeRF library by using build_oai -I -w BLADERF, which will install it from the package manager if the distribution supports it, or falls back to a build from source otherwise.

If you intentionally want to install BladeRF from source, you can follow Nuand's Getting Started guide to do so.

Configure the device

Image Flash

Download the latest FX3 firmware and FPGA images from Nuand's website. There are fx3 images and FPGA images. Download and save the corresponding files to your computer, then install the FX3 firmware

sudo bladeRF-cli -f bladeRF_fw_latest.img

and install the FPGA image (this is x40):

sudo bladeRF-cli -L hostedx40-latest.rbf

Use of the configuration file

This configuration will help the bladeRF board to load the bitstream images automatically, and can be used to set some options automatically that are not configured by OAI.

Create the bladeRF config file:

$ cat ~/.config/Nuand/bladeRF/bladerf.conf
# Load the hostedx40.rbf FPGA image, set the trim DAC, and
# configure the frequency
fpga ~/.config/Nuand/bladeRF/image.rbf
# trimdac 592
# frequency 2.4G

More information is available at Nuand's website.

Useful commands for bladerf-cli

bladeRF-cli can be used to query various device details.

Show the version of bladeRF and device details

bladeRF-cli --exec version
bladeRF-cli --exec info

Probe for a specific device

bladeRF-cli --probe

Print some information on device capabilities and current configuration (bandwidth, frequency, clocking and sample rate, various features)

bladeRF-cli --exec print

Calibration

Retrieve calibration serial number:

bladerf-cli --exec info

Go to the Nuand calibration page and enter your serial number. The website tells you to run something like:

sudo bladeRF-cli -i
flash_init_cal 40 0x9271

Actual values depend on your device and serial number.

You can also rerun a calibration like so

sudo bladeRF-cli -i
cal lms
cal dc rxtx

OAI

Build BladeRF driver

You can use build_oai to build with BladeRF support, e.g.,

cd openairinterface5g/cmake_targets/
./build_oai --ninja --nrUE --gNB -w BLADERF

or you can use cmake directly

cd openairinterface5g/
cmake -B build -G Ninja -DOAI_BLADERF=ON
cmake --build build -t oai_bladerfdevif    # to build only the driver
cmake --build build                        # to build it all

For more information about the build, please refer to the build documentation.

Adapt the OAI-gNB configuration file to your system

You can start from a sample BladeRF configuration fiel.

The only BladeRF-specific configuration resides in RUs.[0].sdr_addrs. This string is passed to bladerf_open() and can be used to select a specific BladeRF device. For instance, to open a specific device with serial 730f5a36545849d9aa71ca6cf50e8ca0 on USB, you would add libusb: serial=730f5a36545849d9aa71ca6cf50e8ca0.

The TX gain is automatically chosen to be the maximum, and can be reduced with att_tx. The RX gain is taken from RUs.[0].max_rxgain, and can be attenuated with att_rx.

The rest of the paramaters (PLMN, frequencies, IP addresses) is the same as in any other configuration. Refer to the general tutorials for more information.

Run the setup

Assuming you built from source above:

cd ~/openairinterface5g/build/
sudo ./nr-softmodem -O ../targets/PROJECTS/GENERIC-NR-5GC/CONF/gnb.sa.band78.fr1.51PRB.bladerf20xa0.conf -E

In case of problems

Refer back to the calibration section above. If not done yet, consider calibrating your device.

You can get more logs from BladeRF. To do so, you have to edit the code and modify this line inside bladerf_lib.c.

-  bladerf_log_set_verbosity(BLADERF_LOG_LEVEL_INFO);
+  bladerf_log_set_verbosity(BLADERF_LOG_LEVEL_VERBOSE);

in function device_init().