Ask Eric Blossom about Software-Defined Radio

Eric Blossom is an electrical engineer with a history of working with radio and communications security. He gave a presentation at the recent H2K2 conference about his work with GNU Radio, which is, bar none, the single most exciting software project in existence today. (Imagine computing devices that communicate seamlessly across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.) As usual, we'll forward some of the best questions to Eric and post his responses when we receive them.

Comments

Convergence Devices

[Nomad7674]

This technology sounds like the kind of thing which could greatly add to the convergence of devices that clutter the electronic life. You could extend convergence not only as a Smartphone but have in one device (though perhaps not simultaneously):
1. Cell phone
2. Computing power (PDA)
3. FRS radio device
4. 802.11x network device
5. Police scanner
6. Television reciever
7. etc.

Have you been approached by police departments, FedEx, etc. to develop devices to allow their people to do more stuff in fewer packages?

As a college student, how do I get involved?

[McCart42]

If I'm interested in doing research in this field someday, and I'm currently a computer engineering major, what are some good electives that I might take? Aside from general programming necessities, what sort of signal processing courses are necessary to understand the underlying aspects of software-defined radio?

Re:Hardware requirements

[d.valued]

Tangential to this.. is there any talk amongst the GNU Radio folks on building a piece of hardware that complements this software project, or is supposed to work with whatever devices the user has on hand/will build?