LimeSDR Antennas

1

Is it just me or the Antennas sold with the LimeSDR are kind of useless?
What kind of antennas are you guys using, also did anyone get a USB type-B micro with their package?

2

The antennas are good. They’re designed for cellular reception, 800/900/1800/1900/2100MHz I think, using them in other frequencies is useless. I bought two of those antennas (TG.09.0113), two other similar antennas with more frequency bands (TG.08.0113) and two wideband antennas (FXUB66.01.0150C).

3

What you said is completely right but I expected it to get at least FM radio but instead I used a stripped copper wire :slight_smile:
I’ll check those antennas, you got them from Digikey?

4

The antennas that you can buy with the lime has SMA connectors :slight_smile:

Any DIY antenna with an SMA can fit on there :smiley:

I would recommend getting a enclosure for ease of having multiple purpose SMA connectors(clk in/out, RX1_L/H/W and RX2_L/H/W.

Just build an antenna for your purpose and crimp the male SMA on the coax.

5

Consider the ANT500 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13002) for 75Mhz - 1Ghz (it has ok US FM band reception (88 - 108Mhz). If you are going to be using the SDR at frequencies under 300Mhz make sure you have the ‘HF mod’ done to the LNAW port. It still won’t be great but it will be improved over the stock filters there. You’ll want an u.fl->SMA (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9145) if you don’t already have one you can use.

–Chuck

6

HF mod is also required for v1.4? I thought this issue has been addressed

7

I’ll let someone who knows answer whether or not it is ‘standard’. All I know is that I got my LimeSDR late because I backed at the ‘Aluminum Enclosure’ level, so it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I actually got a unit, and at that time the change to improve HF performance was still considered a ‘non standard option’ (and it made my unit part of the second or third batches of Aluminum units rather than the early batches.) Based on that experience I would not bet on it being ‘standard’.
–Chuck

8

Yes, if you want improved performance for HF use. When factory modified this is done on RX1_W, so as to leave the L & H ports as standard, with performance peaked for key higher frequency bands.

9

I am a bit confused, I still need to mod the v1.4? Can someone share a link for the mod.
Also what’s the use of the 6x RX ports and the 4x TX? I am just new to this so I hope you guys don’t mind all the questions

10

Hi @rwassily,

You can find details of performance with and without the “HF mod” here:

https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR_HF_Performance

The EasyFix2 is what is done before shipping if you request this mod, albeit rather than inductor MN19 as originally suggested, MN26 is removed. Which means that the mod is applied to the wideband input, rather than the low band one. There are 6x RX ports because each channel, 1 & 2, has low, wide and high band inputs.

Why low, wide and high? See this blog post:

https://myriadrf.org/blog/limesdr-made-simple-part-2-matching-lms7002m-rx-iq/

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