Software-Defined Radio for Engineers [pdf]

http://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/design-handbooks/Software-Defined-Radio-for-Engineers-2018/SDR4Engineers.pdf

by app4soft • 8 years ago

352 50 8 years ago

analog.com

app4soft5• 8 years ago

This book published in free access in Education Library on Analog Devices, Inc. web site.[0]

  Software-Defined Radio for Engineers, by Travis F. Collins,
  Robin Getz, Di Pu, and Alexander M. Wyglinski, 2018,
  ISBN-13: 978-1-63081-457-1.

The web site sdrforengineers[1] provides supplementary materials for the text, hands on content, labs, assignments, end of chapter questions, that anyone can use or contribute to.

Slides and other materials for lectures related to SDR for Engineer textbook released on GitHub.[2]

[0] http://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/softwar...

[1] http://sdrforengineers.github.io

[2] https://github.com/sdrforengineers/LectureMaterials/releases...

mmanulis3• 8 years ago

This is awesome, thank you for making this available. Having had to piece this together from multiple books, blog posts, tutorials, GNU Radio, etc. having a single reference is really helpful

ChuckMcM2• 8 years ago

Very nice, and I think the ADALM-PLUTO is a very accessible SDR that is a step up from the RTL sticks that most folks start with.

gsich• 8 years ago

Primarily because it can also send.

app4soft5• 8 years ago

I think the ADALM-PLUTO is a very accessible SDR that is a step up from the RTL sticks that most folks start with.

Because discussed book name is "Software-Defined Radio for Engineers", and NOT "Software-Defined Radio for Dummies"[0]

;-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies

Gracana• 8 years ago

The sdrforengineers site is just a template, and it doesn't contain or link to anything useful.

I was excited about the book, but I couldn't even get the first MATLab example (gibbs.m) to work. What is scope()?

app4soft5• 8 years ago

The sdrforengineers site is just a template, and it doesn't contain or link to anything useful.

To be clear, sdrforengineers[0] site contain few useful links:

- link to printed version of this book on Amazon;[1]

- link to video course "ECE4305 Software Defined Radio Systems and Analysis " as playlist on YouTube;[2]

- link to their page on GitHub, where repo with LectureMaterials for this book hosted.[3]

[0] http://sdrforengineers.github.io

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Software-defined-Radio-Engineers-Trav...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBfTSoOqoRnOTBTLahXBl...

[3] https://github.com/sdrforengineers/LectureMaterials

jokoon• 8 years ago

I really wish that I could do some basic sdr with android.

People talk about decentralization and privacy and net neutrality, but sdr on handheld would sound very exciting. I'm sure ISPs would argue against it, but communicating small segments of data wirelessly between terminals would open a lot of gates for new kinds of software.

Dht is already at the core of Bitcoin, yet it's not talked a lot about. Dht, to me, is the most important networked algorithm. Implementing the concepts of dht over sdr sounds new and unexplored, but it should be the internet of the future...

mmanulis3• 8 years ago

have you seen this: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/questasdr-new-rtl-sdr-software-for-a...

You could take something like a NooElec (http://www.nooelec.com/) and connect it to your phone. Though you'll need a rooted device.

I tried it and it wasn't the fastest thing out there but let me do some basic scanning.

gh02t• 8 years ago

I've tried a few of the apps on the Play store (non-rooted) and they did work, but they were crashy and when they did work, clunky to the point of being unusable

jcims• 8 years ago

Needs tx. LimeSDR Mini or similar would let you test the concepts but obviously embedding it into the device would be best.

rayiner2• 8 years ago

The problem is that interactions between radio systems can be highly unpredictable. LTE-U, for example, was specifically designed to co-exist with coexist with Wi-Fi, but doesn't do it very well: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/presentation/a4ac/9af05963e.... When designing wireless protocols, there are real benefits to homogeneity.

vvanders4• 8 years ago

LTE has been modified by a few companies so that it can operate in the same unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi uses (called LTE-U)

It looks like to me that the problem is they decided to use the same bands of wifi. If you're going to be using the unlicensed spectrum expect interference.

pjc50• 8 years ago

communicating small segments of data wirelessly between terminals

Packet radio? Or, if you're content with short range, what do you need that isn't provided by wifi?

It's not the ISPs you have to worry about, it's the FCC or other local radio authorities. Because radio is a locally-shared medium, bad implementations can jam it very easily.

Dht is already at the core of Bitcoin

No, it's bittorrent that uses DHT.

madengr4• 8 years ago

https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/Android

eeZah7Ux• 8 years ago

People talk about decentralization and privacy and net neutrality, but sdr on handheld would sound very exciting

"but"?

niftich• 8 years ago

No need to dip down to DSP. You can do this with Android over AP-less ("peer-to-peer") Wi-Fi, so you're coding against a nicer API and Android will speak the protocol for you [1][2].

[1] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi... [2] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi...

Immortalin• 8 years ago

For anyone working with P2P WiFi I highly recommend the Salut Library.

https://github.com/markrjr/Salut

Thé Android P2P API is pretty difficult to use in general.

RpFLCL• 8 years ago

Certainly this is possible with a raspberry pi and a handheld radio.

At my last company I had a friend and coworker who used a pi to communicate with his Android phone for GPS data to then broadcast APRS packets to track his morning bikeride in to the office.

Not exactly handheld but there is room for miniaturization.

app4soft5• 8 years ago

Rtl-sdr driver[0] -- Port of rtl-sdr's rtl_tcp.

Allows you to use I/Q packet source in your Android applications.

All you need is to launch an intent in the form "iqsrc://rtl_tcp_arguments" where you replace rtl_tcp_arguments with the arguments that you want your application to run rtl_tcp with and the magic will be done behind the scenes.

This driver could be used by third party applications to implement Software Defined Radio.

It does not require root for Android 3.1 and above.

[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/marto.rtl_tcp_andro/

hatsunearu• 8 years ago

I'm a ham and I'm slowly churning through designing my own SDR HF radio. I think this might be the end-all be-all guide for my pursuit!

rilut• 8 years ago

Not really related to the book, but it's only yesterday that I've found out about AirplaneJS [0]. It picks up ADS-B radio signals from airplanes and display them over maps on browser like a local Flightradar. It's nice that you can interact with SDR in Node.js

About this book, it's interesting to see that there are more advanced applications of SDR on Chapter 13.

Do you, HN-friends, know any other toy/simple or advanced applications of SDR?

[0] https://github.com/watson/airplanejs

mavidser• 8 years ago

One application I've seen people use is to spoof GPS signals.

trishmapow2• 8 years ago

I'm by no means an expert - just a hobbyist tinkering with some RF magic, but I made a simple POC of using SDR to reverse engineer and perform jam and replay attacks on cars - essentially giving you permanent access (for cars with button keyfobs). I have a short write up here: https://github.com/trishmapow/rf-jam-replay

anfractuosity• 8 years ago

https://github.com/martinmarinov/TempestSDR - Looks amazingly cool! (Van eck phreaking with an SDR)

btgeekboy• 8 years ago

The Stratux project (http://stratux.me) does very similar work, pushing the aircraft positions to most popular electronic flight bag apps. It’s quite common among small aircraft pilots such as myself.

app4soft5• 8 years ago

CubicSDR[0], Gqrx[1], swradio-8[2], qSdrSwr[3] -- all are cross-platform FOSS apps for Linux, Windows, Mac.

Also, look on csete's repos[4] from.

[0] https://github.com/cjcliffe/CubicSDR

[1] https://github.com/csete/gqrx

[2] https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/swradio-8

[3] https://github.com/PTDreamer/qSdrSwr

[4] https://github.com/csete?tab=repositories

swebs• 8 years ago

If you don't want to set up everything yourself and just want to tune in to some numbers stations, there is an online SDR interface hosted from the Netherlands.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

madengr4• 8 years ago

Also https://sdr.hu/

I have a KiwiSDR here:

http://64.136.200.36:8073

mgrennan2• 8 years ago

Wounderful radio. w5tsu.net:8073

zokier• 8 years ago

Arguably also the more boring use of SDR; at least for me the interesting bits come from the ability to (de)modulate, filter, process and otherwise mangle signals in a way that would not be feasible with traditional radios. Using SDR to "just" listen in on old modes and bands seems like a waste in comparison.

BenjiWiebe• 8 years ago

Use an audio pipe an practice demodulating the various modes you can hear.

Also try websdr.org which lists a lot more than just the U. Twente one.

madengr4• 8 years ago

There are several technical advantages to using SDR (and some downsides), but the benefits are greater. By SDR I mean direct sampling of the HF, such as a Flexradio or HPSDR.

e_tm_• 8 years ago

A similar book, used in a few grad-level courses on software defined radio. It includes a good amount of MATLAB snippets and exercises to highlight the math.

Software Receiver Design: Build your Own Digital Communication System in Five Easy Steps

[0] https://books.google.com/books/about/Software_Receiver_Desig...

madengr4• 8 years ago

The hard part, and cool thing, about SDR is that it covers so many disciplines. It's the proverbial rabbit hole, with multiple layers of abstraction.

I'm very good at RF hardware and antenna design; grok that as I do it for a living.

I have dabbled in DSP and FPGAs, hacking some Verilog together with Xilinx blocks to do RF in to USB out. Not a DSP comms guru, but know my way around the theory.

Then got into GNU Radio, so had to learn Python. Got the basics down on that and wrote a GNU radio based app, putting it on Github.

Though then came C++, and the whole Linux development environment. Totally new stuff to delve into. Still trying to wrap my head around that.

signa11• 8 years ago

incidentally, fwiw, i just _love_ the figure-2.1 which shows both time, and frequency domain signals in a single diagram.

turn the whole thing clock-wise, and you have the fourier signals, and counter-clock-wise to get to the time-domain signal.

just beautiful :)

mgrennan2• 8 years ago

Thanks for this. This is such an exciting field. W5TSU

hardmath123• 8 years ago

The last few pages have a nice general history of communications. Gives some great perspective.

JKCalhoun• 8 years ago

Picked up one of these $20 gadgets to play around with a year ago: http://a.co/71lRE13

You can get your feet wet at a small expense. Open source software is available that talks to it on various platforms.

olfactory• 8 years ago

A few interesting things about SDR and the kind of tinkering and experimentation one can do:

- in amateur radio, SDR is starting to dominate new commercial designs, but has not yet overtaken the superhet.

- you can buy a low end SDR (rtlsdr) for $20 or a better one for $120 (sdrplay) or a high end one that transmits for $2K (flexradio)

- Ettus hardware is great if you have the dollars and only care about VHF/UHF

- if you want to play with the concepts without buying hardware, just learn DSP.

- there are many interesting applications that are now fairly affordable to build that used to require massive budgets (due to cheaper FPGAs)

DINKDINK• 8 years ago

Some of the fun: http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

Software-Defined Radio for Engineers [pdf]

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