Adalm Pluto and GNU radio Guide
Gettinng started with Adalm Pluto:
Visit website : https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users
and go through all the topics mentioned especially for RF power input and output, frequency
accuracy for later purposes.
1. Transmit : https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/transmit (for transmitter config’s)
https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/phase_noise (for phase noise)
2. Receive : https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/receive (for receiver config’s)
https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/receiver_sensitivity
After knowing the basics of adalm pluto module the next step is unboxing and updating the
firmware of adalm pluto. For firmware updation I suggest to use windows because it is easier to
update on windows platform. There is also a way to do the same on linux which is bit complicated
compared to windows.The first thing to do is download the drivers and than proceed to connect the
pluto to the PC. The website can be found in “config” file in Adalm Pluto which also provides the
information regarding ip address of pluto and other relevent information.
Driver can be found on : https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/drivers/windows
For help in customising the Pluto visit :
https://wiki.analog.com/university/tools/pluto/users/customizing
Interacting with Pluto module can be done with many different software. These softwares can be
decided based on your operating OS.
For Windows based OS I suggest to use
1. SDRangel
1. Download the latest version of SDRAngel from the releases section of the GitHub. Only a
build for Windows x64 is available and this has the filename sdrangel64_v3.8.4.7z (version
number may change in the future). Linux .deb files are also available for various Ubuntu
versions.
2.Using 7zip, extract the 7z file to a folder on your PC.
The youtube tutorial on SDRangel is availabe on channel SigalsEverywhere
(https://www.youtube.com/user/pspheaven).
2. SDR#
For Linux based OS use GNU radio for signal processing and analyzing.
GNU radio : https://www.gnuradio.org/
GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing
blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF
hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like environment. It
is widely used in research, industry, academia, government, and hobbyist environments to support
both wireless communications research and real-world radio systems.
Installation : In terminal use command : $ sudo apt install gnuradio
The installation of GNUradio with inclusion of Adalm Pluto modules:
Install GNU Radio and other dependencies
Step 1: $ apt-get -y install gnuradio-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev bison flex cmake git libaio-dev
libboost-all-dev swig
Installation of Libiio library
Step 2: $ git clone https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/libiio.git
$ cd libiio
$ cmake .
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
Installation of libad9631-iio Library
Step 3: $ git clone https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/libad9361-iio.git
$ cd libad9361-iio
$ cmake .
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
Download and build gr-iio
Step 4: $ git clone https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/gr-iio.git
$ cd gr-iio
$ cmake .
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
$ sudo ldconfig
The second recomended method is mentioned in this reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/6tnjba/getting_started_with_adalmpluto_and_gnu_ra
dio/
After these steps the GNUradio will successfully have all the modules of Adalm Pluto with pluto
compatible source and sink.
The website to visit for refrence : https://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/linux-
software/gnuradio
