I got my hands on some decent LT power detectors and AD log amps, and I would like to build a circuit that is completely generic and plugs in to the RF front end to obtain received signal strength. This sounds silly but I want to build an antenna diversity controller that is wide band and generic for use with any SDR or Analog radio.
The more I thought about this the more I think I am going about this the wrong way and it may have to be hardware dependent. Would a standard S meter or rssi meter be built by tapping a directional coupler to the IF and then running the signal to a power detector? If so this shoots wide compatibility since most SDRs do the IF internally and would call for specific drivers that receive the signal strength from the PC. Dave just had some meter in a mailbag that could test receive strength of an antenna though, so maybe there is a way to do this on the RF front end before the antenna without IF tapping??