Hello Patrick,
Good questions. To start, no, the bbInitiate function does not need to be called for each data acquisition. If you use the initiate function to configure a particular sweep, you may continue to acquire sweeps until you call the bbInitiate function again. bbInitiate must be called to change configuration though. If you are sweeping, the bbInitiate function is nearly instantaneous (no hardware involvement is required). Most of the work done is pre-allocating memory and processing classes. So even if you need to rapidly change sweep parameters this will appear instantaneous. If you are streaming I/Q data, the initiate function takes about 17ms using BB60C firmware version 6, and ~750ms using firmware version 5 or less. The long delay for firmware version 5 is due to inefficiencies in shutting down the data stream to the PC. We have very recently corrected this and released it as a firmware update (ver 6). New units will ship with this, and old units can upgrade. You must be using the latest API to get the low I/Q switch speeds. (API version 3.0.6)
Our spectrum analyzer software uses the same exact API we provide users.
Regarding GNURadio, currently we do not have support for it, nor do we plans for building the necessary interface. We would love to, but we have limited programming resources.
Regards,
A.J.
