Debugging
Contents
File Sink and Source
GNU Radio flowgraphs are real-time signal processing applications that typically operate on continuous streams of data. This can make it difficult to investigate signal characteristics or debug unexpected behaviour. The GNU Radio File Sink and File Source blocks are a handy way to allow offline investigation of the signal at various points in your flowgraph using Python scientific libraries or MATLAB.
When included in your flowgraph, the File Sink block will save data samples to a binary file that can then be loaded as an array in Python or MATLAB. Similarly, a known test waveform can be generated in Python or MATLAB and then fed into your flowgraph using the File Source block. The combination of sink and source can also be used to save a waveform for latter playback.
See the following GNU Radio documentation pages to understand these blocks and how to binary waveforms files can be loaded/created in MATLAB and Python.