Hello Mikes,
Good question. We have several customers who have developed 2 receiver systems. The most common issue users see is high CPU usage. Each IQ stream is going to consume ~10% usage on a desktop Intel processor and customers report that it doesn’t scale linearly, i.e. 2 receivers will generally consume more CPU usage than 2 X 1 receiver. We don’t have much experience above 2 receivers. I suspect you will run into stability issues regarding USB transfer and will start experiencing disconnects/data loss. I’m guessing, that a very high end desktop system could support 4 receivers with minimal issue.
Let me know if you have more specific questions. I apologize I can’t be more concrete here, these types of solutions are going to be very dependent on the hardware used and software requirements in the final configuration.
You can also email me at aj at signalhound dot com if you would like to discuss your ideas in more detail.
Regards,
Andrew