Long Time Recording | Data reduction | Excel Export
My project simply needs to:
1. Quickly scan 700Mhz to 2500Mhz at 300Khz RBW
2. Remove all IQ signal values that are below -80dBm (the noise floor max values)
2. Mark the six highest peaks (their amplitude and frequency) during scanning
3. Sum the power of the entire 1800mhz span range (after noise filter) and give a value in mV/m or DbmW/m2 for a particular duration (10 seconds for example).
4. Write the above marker peak values and the range sum power value to a file on the disk every X seconds (eg: every 5 seconds).
5. Give the option some days later to be able to read the file from disk and play back the data as a Data Table view (and perhaps Waterfall as well).This task is for a project that has the goal of identifying sum total EMR dosage values over a full frequency range for a particular location during a particular time period. Really would be so glad of any solutions or tips that you can provide me.
Attached mission should do what you are asking for and even better:
We are running the SPECTRAN V6 Sweep Zoom block sweeping the full 6GHz range. The Frequency Zoom is activated where you can select the band/range of interest. Since the stream Output Range is set to "View" only the selected frequency range will be streamed to the connected Waterfall block.
We also added 6 markers (which you can adjust as needed in numbers) operating on a Max Fall trace which can be adjusted in time as well.
Within the Waterfall block you can adjust the "Time Compression" as needed to reduce the data and to get a perfect long term view of the sweep.
With a high "Time Compression" value you can easily get a 24h or even higher view on what is going on. You can also record this compressed data to disk for later import and playback.
The complete Waterfall data can be exported as an Excel data table for later processing by using the export button in the Waterfall title bar.
Uploaded files:
Thank you very much for taking the time to make this mission for me!! I appreciate it very much and it looks very good.
However I cannot make it work in my RTSA pro software((
I guess it is something basic that I'm doing wrong and hope you can correct me...
I loaded the mission into the software and clicked on play.. the spectrum and waterfall blocks work perfectly and show the real signal data coming from the antenna and all the traces are fine. But the file writer will not work. I selected a file name for it to write to, and then clicked on "record" and it starts the process and shows "stop" instead of record. But in the file writer status window it shows "write rate: 0.0mb/s" and "bytes written: 0gb", even if I leave it for several minutes. After clicking stop, I check the .rtsa file on the disk which it created - but it is only 58kb in size and it wrote nothing.
The same thing happens in all of my own missions, the file writer block never records anything from any blocks, except the "IQ power spectrum block" - if I connect it to that block then it records everything fine, but that's the problem - it records absolutely everything and creates a 2GB file in just some seconds. I need it to only record peaks/markers or only record a max value every 5 seconds. Why does it not record from any block except IQ power spectrum?
The File Writer definitely works well.
Check the block setting for incorrect settings and make sure you are using the latest RTSA software:
If you set the Waterfall Max Hold Ratio (compression) to "10", the data will be reduced by a factor of 10, as you can see from the file size (108MB = 120 seconds of uncompressed data, 10MB = 120 seconds with a factor of 10- compression):
You might also want to add the DataTable block to see tha data coming from the Waterfall block:
You can then see the data live on the screen incl. color vs numeric size (adjustable). By setting the Waterfall data reduction to 100 you get a max hold every 10 seconds, setting it to 1000 every 100 seconds etc.:
Thank you very much for helping me out again. Yes as you rightly said, this was a problem with my setup or with my version of the RTSA software which actually was a beta version from 4 months ago.
I have now removed the software and installed the latest v2.0 from your website and the file-writer block now works perfectly. The mission is very good and helps me a lot, so thanks for providing it!
This software is really awesome! Keep up the good work guys!
Hi,
What is the compressed data in Waterfall? e.g., when I set the compression ratio to 10, does it average the data every 10 units of time and record it? or does it simply register data less often (every 10 units of time) and ignore the rest?
Best, A.
Quote from aminucd on 29/10/2022, 15:18Hi,
What is the compressed data in Waterfall? e.g., when I set the compression ratio to 10, does it average the data every 10 units of time and record it? or does it simply register data less often (every 10 units of time) and ignore the rest?
You can configure that using the "Compression Mode" setting just below the "Time Compression" setting itself. By default it will select the maximum power value within the input range to be compressed, but you can change it to calculate the Average (logarithmic or normalized) or Minimum or just pick the first value.
Hi,
In Waterfall data the timing differences are not fixed. I set the compression rate at 1600 but the data records at different time intervals e.g. 54s 57s 48s ..how can I fix it to 60s for all rows of data.
Thanks, A.
The compression is a SPECTRA ratio not time. You could only try to set the FFT size, span etc. so it fits your time comression needed by try and error.
