Software-Defined Radio: the Apple I of Broadcast?

benfrog writes "A company called Per Vices has introduced software-defined radio gear that Ars Technica is comparing to the Apple I. Why? Because software radio can broadcast and receive nearly any radio signal on nearly any frequency at the same time, and thus could 'revolutionize wireless.' The Per Vices Phi is one of the first devices aimed at the mass hobbyist market to take advantage of this technology."

Comments

Re:gnu radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why the sockpuppets are badmouthing the GNU so loudly lately. That ship has sailed. They won. Free(as in freedom) software is legitimate, is a legitimate business model, and is eating the lunch of commercial software in many arenas while chipping away at others. Even the BSDers with their doublespeak about the GPL being "less free" amount to little more than a gigantic pile of butthurt. Maybe you could have made that argument a decade ago, but history has also vindicated the FSF here too.

The FSF and Stallman are like.. Socrates. Principled and unwavering, uncomfortably correct. Their detractors have little recourse but to badmouth them. (Haha communisim, haha dirty bearded hippy.)

Only half of the widget...

[Worchaa]

FTFA: "It could record FM radio and digital television signals, read RFID chips, track ship locations, or do radio astronomy. In principle it could perform all of these functions simultaneously."

Nice try, but no. At least not in a practical sense and certainly not as a mobile rig.

Software Defined Radios are sweet but still dependent on a Physically Defined Antenna. I can see loads of wonderful uses for a broadband, frequency-agile SDR. Actually, I use them often as a Ham radio operator and they are extremely cool. However, there's still the problem of the pesky antenna. You can fudge quite a bit on a receiving antenna, not so much with a transmitting antenna (or a single transceiver antenna), and the engineers out there are very talented and clever at coming up with better designs... but it always tends to come down to the antenna.

My point is that advances in SDR tech is fantastic, but they're not-- nor do I ever see them becoming-- a magic box. What I think they WILL do is streamline production. One super SDR can be dropped into a number of application-specific boxes.

Re:Pirate radio?

[zippthorne]

Cell company lobbyists and congress drones apparently thought that you can keep the radio communication equivalent of shouting across a quiet room private by, instead of encrypting the communication, passing laws that make it illegal to notice.

I'm not sure that the FCC or ITU had any part in it, however it seems likely that at least ITU would have been involved....

The remaining question is whether we'll see the law rolled back now that it's been obviated by encryption (or at least CDMA spread spectrum), and is so obviously useless - the only way to detect if someone is listing is to yourself be listening in enough places to measure the shadow created by their receiving equipment or the extremely low-power emission of interference frequencies, assuming that they're using that method of demodulation, equipment capable of receiving the old AM cell phone transmissions can be made in an afternoon using readily available components.