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SDR

From dankwiki
The SDR software stack, at least according to PothosWare (authors of SoapySDR)

Software-defined radio moves the majority of radio processing into software, facilitating relatively inexpensive wide-band hardware interfaces to the electromagnetic spectrum, especially those frequencies below 3GHz. Pairing advanced SDRs with software-defined, -tuned, and -selected antennae yields dynamically optimal cognitive radio. Perhaps most famously, DVB-T television tuners built around the RTL2832U chip, available in USB-A form factor for less than $30 (particularly the Rafael Micro R820T2), can reliably provide 2MHz of RX bandwidth anywhere from ~30MHz to ~2GHz (still lower frequencies are supported via direct sampling). For $500, powerful units capable of tremendous bandwidth and range (as well as transmission capabilities) are available, and from there it's not that great a leap to building your own stingray--if the cops have 'em, so should you, doyouknowhatiamsayin?

A few of Your Humble Wikist's toys

On the more ballin' end of things, a tricked-out Per Vices Cyan will run you $290k before shipping.

Almost every SDR fundamentally works by receiving electromagnetic energy via metal antennae, running that through an amplifier ("analog gain", done to place the signal in the next stage's sweet spot), and sampling the result using an ADC. The latter will have a resolution in bits, and a sampling rate measured in samples per second (or Hz). These samples pass through a digital down converter circuit, a low-pass filter, and finally decimation, emerging as a (complex) baseband frequency range, and streaming out as I/Q (in-phase and quadrature) pairs.

Hardware

Hosted SDRs

The following SDRs all require an attached computer; they are not standalone devices.

Device Tuner BW (MHz) Samples (M) ADC Tune (MHz) Xmit? FPGA? Bus MSRP
RTL-SDRv3 R820TR2 2.4 sustained
3.2 peak
8 25--1750 No No USB2A $20
NooElec NESDR
SMArt
R820TR2 2.4 sustained
3.2 peak
0.225--0.3
0.9--2.56
8 25--1750 No No USB2A $20
NooElec NESDR
SMArt XTR
E4000 2.4 8 65--1100
1200--2300
No No USB2A $35
SDRPlay RSP2 10 12 DC--2000 No No USB2B $170
SDRPlay RSP1A MSI001 6 14 DC--2000 No No USB2B $100
SDRPlay RSPDuo 2x10 2--10.66 14 DC--2000 No No USB2B $280
HackRF One RFFC5072 20 2--20 8 1--6000 Half No USB2Aµ $300
LimeSDR LMS7002M 61.44 2.5--30.72 12 10--3500 1x Cyclone IV USB3 $300
AirSpy R2 R820TR2 10 2.5--10 12 24--1800 No No USB2Aµ $170
AirSpy Mini R820TR2 12 6 12 24--1750 No No USB2Aµ $100
AirSpy HF+ 0.768 16 DC--31
60--260
No No USB2Aµ $150
bladeRF 2.0µ xA4 AD9361 56 61.44 12 47--6000 2x Cyclone V USB3B $480
bladeRF x40 LMS6002D 28 40 12 300--3800 1x Cyclone IV USB3B $420
Ettus B210 USRP AD9361 56 61.44 12 70--6000 2x Spartan 6
XC6SLX150
USB3B $1100
Ettus B200 USRP AD9361 56 61.44 12 70--6000 1x Spartan 6
XC6SLX75
USB3B $675
Per Vices Noctar 250 125 12 / 16 DC--4000 1x Cyclone IV
EP4CGX22C
4xPCIe $2500
Mirics MSi3101 MSi001
FunCube Dongle Pro+ 0.192 16 150--260
410--2050
No No USB2A $200
PlutoSDR AD9363 20 61.44 12 325--3800 1x Z-7010 USB2Aµ $150
SignalHound BB60C 27 0.3125--40 14 DC--6000 No USB3Bµ $2900

Antennae

Low-level software

The Linux SDR software ecosystem is robust, but complex. There are multiple middleware layers available, providing generic access to various hardware devices. Many user-exposed applications support both middlewares, sometimes in addition to their own native hardware support. As a result, there can be multiple ways to specify a given piece of hardware in a particular tool.

Kernel

At the lowest level live the various driver libraries for SDR hardware. It is atypical for SDR hardware to require (or provide) a Linux kernel driver; most appear to be implemented wholly in userspace atop raw USB devices (exceptions include the Mirics MSi2500 and the Ettus USRP). Indeed, the primary interaction most users will have with their kernel might be removing (and possibly blacklisting) the dvb_usb_rtl28xxu DVB driver autoloaded for the RTL-SDRv3 USB dongle (the rtl2832_sdr and rtl2832 kernel objects go with this driver, and ought--despite their names--also be removed). This driver prevents the RTL from being used with rtl_sdr, the userspace RTLSDR libraries. To blacklist it, create an entry ending in .conf in /etc/modprobe:

dank@vespula:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rtl8xxxu.conf 
blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu
blacklist rtl2832_sdr
blacklist rtl2832
dank@vespula:~$ 

note that users of initramfs might need to rebuild or modify their initramfs to include this file. Adding a blacklist entry does not remove a loaded module; for that, use rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu.

Userspace drivers

As noted above, most of these drivers work on raw USB devices. You'll need set up appropriate udev rules to give users permission.

Family Software Source Tools
RTL2832U rtl-sdr from OsmoCom https://github.com/osmocom/rtl-sdr.git rtl_test, rtl_sdr, rtl_power, rtl_tcp, rtl_fm, rtl_eeprom, rtl_adsb
HackRF libHackRF from Great Scott https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf.git hackrf_cpldjtag, hackrf_debug, hackrf_info, hackrf_spiflash, hackrf_sweep
BladeRF libbladerf from Nuand https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF bladeRF-cli, bladeRF-fsk, bladeRF-install-firmware
Airspy AirSpy One from AirSpy https://github.com/airspy/airspyone_host.git airspy_gpio, airspy_gpiodir, airspy_info, airspy_lib_version, airspy_r820t, airspy_rx, airspy_si5351c, airspy_spiflash
Ettus UHD from Ettus https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd.git uhd_cal_rx_iq_balance, uhd_find_devices, uhd_siggen, uhd_cal_tx_dc_offset, uhd_image_loader, uhd_siggen_gui, uhd_cal_tx_iq_balance, uhd_images_downloader, uhd_usrp_probe, uhd_config_info, uhd_rx_cfile

Middleware layers

Following the proliferation of device-specific libraries, efforts have been made to unite them under one portable userspace API. Both of these layers use the hardware-specific drivers described above, and as of 2019, both can use the other as a device type:

GrOsmoSDR

The Open Source MObile COMmunications project is the primary caretaker of the RTL-SDR effort, which has largely replaced their own (discontinued) OsmoSDR. In addition, the Osmocom GNU Radio blocks (gr-osmocom, GrOsmoSDR) provide a hardware abstraction over many SDRs, though expressed in the idioms of GNU Radio. GrOsmoSDR was the first major open source radio abstraction, and the first place many enthusiast SDRs saw support outside of their own drivers and tools.

GrOsmoSDR uses for its device specification comma-delimited list of solitary arguments and/or argument=value pairs. A full reference must be distilled from source. Use of a Soapy driver can be indicated via adding soapy=0 to the driver spec. License: GPL3

SoapySDR

The Pothos dataflow processing project required SDR sinks and sources, and presents a cleaner API for projects outside the GNU Radio umbrella via libsoapysdr (a GNU Radio block, gr-soapy, has been built directly atop libsoapysdr). Soapy's native hardware coverage lacks a few minor devices supported by GrOsmoSDR, but it can wrap osmocom devices with the SoapyOsmo module (as noted above, gr-osmocom can likewise wrap Soapy devices via its Soapy driver). Soapy hardware modules are dynamic libraries linked in via dlopen() on demand.

Soapy uses for its device specification a comma-delimited list of argument-value pairs, but always takes as the first pair "driver=FOO". License: Boost

High-level software

Suites

  • rx_tools is a reimplementation of several of the rtl_sdr tools (rx_fm, rx_power, and rx_sdr) using Soapy for portability.
  • GNU Radio, the 300-kilo orca of open source software radio. GNU Radio is not the most intuitive program ever written, but it has a nice GUI on the front, a rich wiki, active (and expert) development, and 4,000 component blocks. If GNU Radio can't do it, it probably can't be done. Whether you can figure out how to do it with GNU Radio is an entirely different question. GNU Radio has both Osmocom and Soapy native blocks, because of course it does.
  • Pothos seems to be trying to be GNU Radio, but for...data processing? It's a truly expansive framework; I primarily know it as the source of (and impetus for) SoapySDR.

Demodulators

These programs allow one to explore a particular captured signal, either from a file or in realtime from an SDR. In addition, most allow for exploration of the RF spectrum via a waterfall plot and/or an FFT plot, as well as configuration of locally-attached (or even networked) devices. There are about 4,000 of these.

  • GQRX: uses the GrOsmoSDR GNU Radio interfaces
  • CubicSDR: uses the Soapy interfaces
  • SDRangel: geared towards AirSpy
  • sdrangelove: old project from Osmocom, seems dead
  • QSpectrumAnalyzer: python, bleh
  • LinRAD: advanced, mysterious. CUDA/OpenCL-enabled; appears to do its own drivers
  • inspectrum: offline (no capture, only recorded files), but detailed
  • rtl_433: SoapySDR consumer that seeks to decode 315/433/868/915MHz transmissions

Wideband scanners

Transmitters

  • quisk: color scheme made me want to vomit, exited immediately

I've done all my transmitting thus far with GNU Radio, and honestly haven't generally known what I was doing.

RF spectrum

The radio spectrum is managed by the International Telecommunications Union. It is typically understood to cover those frequencies up to 300GHz, though the ITU lays claim to all EM "propagated in space without artificial guide" under 3THz. Radio waves are generated by electrically-charged particles whenever they undergo acceleration, and are carried by photons, the gauge boson/quantum/force carrier of the electromagnetic force. All photons travel at the speed of light in their surrounding material, and have 0 rest mass (but do acquire mass and momentum via movement). A wave's length decreases linearly as the frequency increases: a 300GHz wave has a corresponding wavelength of about 1mm, whereas a 30Hz wave has a wavelength of 10Mm (10 orders of magnitude in each case).

  • Medium wave: 526.5--1606.5kHz (Europe), 525--1705kHz (US), channels every 9kHz (Europe) or 10kHz (US)
    • Groundwaves propagate following Earth curvature, skywaves reflect off of the ionosphere
    • AM radio
  • Longwave: everything below 525kHz (approximately; no official definition). Sees groundwaves.
  • Shortwave: 2--30MHz (approximately; no official definition). Sees skywaves.