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bladeRF FX3 Firmware Source

The FX3 firmware source is compiled for the Cypress FX3 USB 3.0 Superspeed controller. This controller converts the USB connection to a 32-bit GPIF-II programmable interface via Cypress' GPIF-II designer software.

The FX3 currently has 3 interfaces associated with it:

  • Cyclone IV FPGA Loader
  • RF Link with the LMS6002D
  • Control Interface

The FPGA loader is responsible for loading, or reloading, the FPGA over the USB link.

The RF link transfers baseband IQ samples between the FPGA and the host over the USB link.

The control interface uses the built in UART to communicate with the FPGA. Messages sent over this interface include general GPIO settings, LMS6002D register accesses, VCTCXO trim DAC settings and the Si5338 clock generator register accesses.

Building

Building the FX3 firmware first requires the download of the Cypress FX3 SDK. This is free (monetarily) and may require registration on the Cypress website. The FX3 uses ThreadX as an RTOS for the ARM9 which is distributed with their SDK and linked to from our software.

This firmware build requires FX3 SDK version 1.3.3 or later

CMake is used to configure the build. There are two locations that we must provide to CMake when configuring the build:

  1. The path to the FX3 SDK, via an FX3_INSTALL_PATH definition. For Windows FX3 SDK installations, this is generally already set in the environment.
  2. The path to the toolchain description file in cmake/fx3-toolchain.cmake

Command Line-Based Build (Recommended for Linux Users)

Below are instructions for building the FX3 firmware from the command-line. This assumes that cmake and make are in your PATH, and is best suited for Linux developers.

Windows users may wish to skip to the next section for a GUI-based build. (Note that a command-line build is possible with the Code Sorcery tools provided in the FX3 SDK, however. The programs have a cs- prefix on many of them, such as cs-make.)

Adjust the paths as necessary on your system, depending where you installed the FX3 SDK.

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DFX3_INSTALL_PATH=/opt/cypress/fx3_sdk -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../cmake/fx3-toolchain.cmake ../
$ make

When the firmware build is completed, you should have an output directory containing bladeRF_fw_v<VERSION>.img.

Note that it is still possible to use Eclipse to develop and debug if you followed the above steps. See the Creating an Eclipse Project section below.

GUI-Based Build (Recommended for Windows Users)

The GUI-based build procedure is better suited for Windows users.

  1. Run the CMake GUI
  2. Fill in path to the source. For example:
    C:/Users/jon/Documents/projects/nuand/bladeRF/fx3_firmware
  3. Set the path to the binaries directory to build.
    For example: C:/Users/jon/Documents/projects/nuand/bladeRF/fx3_firmware/build
  4. Click Add Entry. An Add Cache Entry dialog will appear.
  5. Set Name to CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM
  6. Set Type to FILEPATH
  7. For Value, use the ... button to locate the path to cs-make.exe. For a standard installation, this would be:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Cypress\EZ-USB FX3 SDK\1.3\ARM GCC\bin\cs-make.exe
  8. Click OK. The Description field does not need to be filled in.
  9. Click Configure. A dialog will appear, asking you to specify the Generator for this project.
  10. Under Select Generator..., select Unix Makefiles
  11. Choose Specify toolchain file for cross-compiling
  12. Click Next.
  13. Select the path to cmake/fx3-toolchain.cmake. For example:
    C:/Users/jon/Documents/projects/nuand/bladeRF/fx3_firmware/cmake/fx3-toolchain.cmake
  14. Click Finish. You will see that a number of variables have been added to the CMake Cache.
  15. Click Configure. This should print Configuring done when complete.
  16. Click Generate. This should pring Generating done when complete.
  17. There should now be an fx3_firmware/build directory containing a Makefile

The Cypress FX3 Installer creates an FX3_INSTALL_PATH environment variable that specifies the path to the FX3 SDK. This is used by default above configuration. If you encounter issues in the above procedure, check that this environment variable is defined by echoing it from cmd.exe. If it is not present, you can add this in the same way you added the CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM variable definition. An example of this definition is:
C:/Program Files (x86)/Cypress/EZ-USB FX3 SDK/1.3

Creating an Eclipse Project

The FX3 SDK provides an Eclipse-based IDE. A pre-configured project file for this tool is provided in this fx3_firmware directory. To import this project, perform the following steps.

  1. Start the Eclipse IDE provided with the FX3 SDK, navigate to your workspace, and switch to the C/C++ perspective.
  2. From the C/C++ Projects view, select:
    Import... --> General -> Existing Projects into Workspace.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Under Select root directory, select this directory (bladeRF/fx3_firmware)
  5. You should see bladeRF listed under Projects. Ensure this is checked and click Finish.
  6. Linux users only: From the C/C++ Projects view, right click bladeRF and select Properties. Under C/C++ Build --> Builder Settings, uncheck Use default build command and change cs-make to make. cs-make is provided with the Windows SDK. Linux users may simply use the make program provided by their distribution.
  7. Kick off the build! The resulting build/output/bladeRF_fw_v<VERSION>.img should be the same as those obtained from the command-line build outlined in the previous section.

For more information about developing and debugging FX3 firmware, see the FX3 Programmer's Manual.

Pre-built Firmware Binaries

Pre-built binaries are available at: http://www.nuand.com/fx3

The latest image is pointed to by: http://www.nuand.com/fx3/latest.img