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Universal Software Radio Peripheral From GnuRadio
The Universal Software Radio Peripheral for GNURadio has now gone into production and is
available for purchase for $450. It used to be insanely expensive to acquire this
technical equipment. Now the price has dropped by two orders of magnitude, to something about as expensive as a high-end graphics card. How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
When HAM radio is?
Seriously, what kind of commentary is this, especially with the FCC giving unprecedented amounts of frequency bandwidth back to the public?
Couldn't the article have done just as well without the last sentence?
A quick search on google revealed what this thing is.. Basically it allows you to build radio receiving equipement using software instead of traditional hardware (resistors, capacitors, transistors etc..). To quote something I just read 'getting code closer to the antenna'. Interesting idea cause it means you could theoretically write a receiver to decode digital signals (like TV) without paying for it? (Ok, perhaps a little un-realistic at the moment but this is the basic idea).
Essentially this is a device to 'tune' to any of the millions of frequencies that are in the upper part of the non-visible Electromagnetic spectrum. TV and Radio are broadcast in the long wavelength low frequency part of the specturm. Pretty pictures at Nasa
t rum/index.html
(Warning: you may have to click through a stupid ad.)
Anyway, Here's a Salon Article about the polictical & technical aspects of it:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spec
www.rdex.net
There were quite a few pages dedicated to the advances in digital radio and SDR in Monitoring Times a few months back.
One of the biggest advantages to a true SDR radio is that the manufacturer can build one or two models of radios, and have different software loads depending on bandsplit, features, costs, etc.
Motorola tried that with their Jedi-series and XTS series of handy talkies over the past decade... biggest problem was that it is pretty simple (technologically) to take a radio with no special features (smartnet, digital modes, tone signalling, etc.) and enable the features by cloning the software load of another model.
They did smarten up to that with the MTS2000 line of radios; any attempt to force a 'codeplug' into it that didn't belong would turn the unit into a brick, and you'd have to send it back to Motorola for a costly repair (as well as a stern talking to for 'hacking' at the radio).
True software defined radios would be a lot easier to secure... on paper it would drive prices way down... in reality, as long as the radio manufacturers control the public service contracts, prices will still remain sky high.
As an aside, WiNRADiO markets a device that could *almost* be considered an SDR device... super pricey for a receiver, but neat concept.
I am looking forward to the day we see true SDR transceivers.
Is it really so hard to use tags?
Software radio or SDR - an intresting subject where mathematical formulas become radio.
See for a high level overview.
Good reading is Understanding digital Signal processing by Richard G. Lyons. Prentice Hall, 1st ed: ISBN 0201634678 (amazon.com, search). 2nd ed: ISBN 0-13-108989-7 (amazon.com, search)
VanuBose 's company Vanu Technology demonstrated a software radio based on an iPAQ with a digital radio "backpack", in May 2003. Here are some links:
Slashdot article
Linuxdevices.com
Vanu.com
Vanu.com
Here's a note on the future of software defined radio
Several relevant pointers available here
Look up dual-use technology and try again.
Care to tell me what in the world that has to do with anything? A Google search on "dual-use technology" returns nothing particularly enlightening. The term usually comes up in connection with technology exports.
A receiver that covers 870-890 MHz has legitimate uses beyond monitoring AMPS cell-phone conversations, but that didn't stop the cellular lobby from buying the ECPA. What, in your obviously-informed opinion, is going to stop a similar consortium of HDTV broadcasters from buying legislation to outlaw unprotected high-bandwidth conversion hardware?
Don't you guys get tired of being paranoid every second of every day, about everything?
So sayeth the Anonymous Coward....
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
The idea behind soft-radio is that you grab a signal from the air and use software to 'decode' it instead of hardware. So all decoding becomes an issue of software and not hardware.
You can grab an FM signal from an antenna, use some software 'stuff', and get your favorite local station to come out the computer speaker. The only hardware you need is an antenna and a frontend to pump the signal into your computer. This device is that frontend interface between the RF capture device (antenna, dish, etc) and the computer, via a USB2 plug. The reason it was developed was that this kind of hardware was either very specific (grab only FM signals or TV signals) or very expensive (the cost of a new computer or two).
The reason this will be labeled a terrorist device is because you can grab any signal from the spectrum (if you can make an antenna) so all the decoding becomes a software problem. You develop a program to decode HBO's satellite feed, and bang, this thing gets banned as a pirate device, err terrorist device as that's the buzzword dejour. Special interests will push this through Gov like everything else and claim it's destroying American capitalism, meanwhile never mentioning their monopolies destroy fair competition and hurt the consumer when prices rise.
Geeks will lament as not only is this device a reciever but it's a transmiter as well. Want to make an ad-hoc WiFi-like network on some other frequency? What about a smart 'cell' phone that makes it's own network so you don't need a common provider (think p2p phones)? As it's so new, the possibilities have not been well thought out, but technologies like this are a solution looking for a problem, kinda like the PC in the 1980s.