Attus B210 and LimeSDR

[Andrew Thornett]

What, if any, is the roll of these two SDRs in modern amateur radio astronomy?

Andy

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 2025-09-09 12:31, 'Andrew Thornett' via Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers wrote:

What, if any, is the roll of these two SDRs in modern amateur radio astronomy?

Andy

They're both architecturally very similar--a two-channel radio with a shared LO, providing two-channel phase-coherency--necessary for interferometry.

The Lime unit use an LMS7002 (AFAIR) chip, while the B210 uses an AD9361 chip.   In my experience the AD9361 chip is superior.

They both offer considerably more instantaneous bandwidth than the RTL-SDR or the AirSpy.

The two channels in either Lime or Ettus units must be tuned to the same frequency--only a single LO.  So you can't use them for a situation with
  two entirely-different channels.

If you have the luxury of being in the middle of nowhere, the extended bandwidth on either of these units means an improvement in sensitivity for
  both continuum and things like pulsar observations.

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[Brad Thomas]

I have used both successfully for hydrogen hyperfine transition line
observations on a small (10 foot) dish. I found the b210 to be easy to
use and low noise. The LimeSDR may be a defunct project, but I
successfully used the mini and their larger SDR.

--Brad Thomas

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 2025-09-09 12:55, Brad Thomas wrote:
> I have used both successfully for hydrogen hyperfine transition line
> observations on a small (10 foot) dish. I found the b210 to be easy to
> use and low noise. The LimeSDR may be a defunct project, but I
> successfully used the mini and their larger SDR.

The LimeSDR-USB is being re-introduced, apparently.

I've also used both, and the LimeSDR is slightly noisier--in both
phase-noise and amplitude noise.  Not sure why.  My recollection is that its
  ADC is kind of a "rough" 10-bit implementation.    The AD9361 on the
B210 has a 12-bit ADC that is based on a 2-bit SAR ADC that is actually
  sampling at 750Msps internally, and then doing the SAR thing.  The
end result is better in my experience.

[Andrew Thornett]

Hi Brad

What software did you use with them and operating system?

I would like to devise a guidance page for my website on SDR choice for radio astronomy, so the more responses I get from folks the better.

Andy

Sent from Outlook for Android

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From: sara...@googlegroups.com <sara...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Brad Thomas <kbtho...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 5:55:17 PM
To: sara...@googlegroups.com <sara...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SARA] Attus B210 and LimeSDR

 

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[Brad Thomas]

Mostly I used freeware Gnu Radio, pothos, vendor-supplied libraries and python libraries. Also Matlab signal module to analyze data. That was all fun, but there are probably several dedicated projects out there now, including freeware.

—Brad

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