Is it possible to use a USB3 to GbE converter with LimeSDR in order to send I/Q data via Ethernet packets which would be consumed by a Linux host or another FPGA board (or both)?
There are cheap USB3-to-GbE converters which requires a driver for Linux, but in this case the driver code would be in the LimeSDR USB chip.
I’m wondering if anyone has considered or tried this before with other embedded product.
What about using ODROID XU4 microcomputer (Raspberry Pi alternative) and connect LimeSDR to it? It has USB 3.0 and GbE, costs $59. You can only run SoapyRemote on it, which works transparently over network for both RX and TX.
This seems to be a great option. In fact I could replace the host with such a mini-board (ARM ODROID or x86 Up Board) and run Ubuntu which would capture LimeSDR I/Q data via USB3 and send directly to a bigger Virtex FPGA board via GbE for LTE channel processing experiments. The miniboard with Ubuntu would run an open source LTE SW stack. It looks like a promising and affordable setup for experiments.
Yes, UP2 (UP Squared) board can be great alternative to ODROID XU4 with potentially much more performance. But it costs also much more (price starts at $145) and it can be only pre-ordered for now.