SDR, The software defined radio is something that is fascinating and popular between hackers and radio hobbyist. SDR is a hardware device that is capable of receiveing the EM wave or wireless signal.The frequency range of reception is predefined by the hardware.
The very first SDR was developed before 50 years ago as a software baseband analysis tool , now the technology has become advanced and compact, it can not just receive the signal but also transmits signal as well.
The basic idea behind the SDR is to compute the received singal in software. It could be anything like filtering, demphasing, demodulation, modulation etc.
Let us consider an example of FM signal, the common and widely accepted wideband FM Radio station (87.5-108 MHz) uses frequency modulation technique before broadcasting.
This signal can be received by the SDR's Antenna.
We know in any communication system to extract original signal we have to decode the received signal accordingly how it is encoded in transmitter side.
To listen the FM station, the broadcasted signal has to be demodulated.
The dedicated Radio device has demodulator chip as a hardware component. Unlike these device SDR technology only receive signal on hardware portion, the received signal is forwarded to PC.
Now the Software SDR does everything to retrieve original audio signal (transmitted from FM stations).
Advantages of SDR:
For dedicated hardware approach like FM Radio device and Television must have those bulky and costy dedicated Integrated Circuit for demodulation and other signal processing stuff.But using SDR any signal can be decoded by same hardware (PC).
It has wide application in communication system.
There are various GNU software of SDR device for beginners to learn, SDR Sharp (SDR#) is one of them.
Different development environment also does have support for sdr device like MATLAB, python, C/C++.
GNU Radio Companion is a great tool for sdr device.It is best for both noob and professionals.
At current scenario the popular SDR Hardware device are:
1. RTL-SDR
2. HackRF one
3. ADALM-PLUTO
The video demonstrate the WFM reception in SDR# software.
1 Comments
Good information. I would test one Day
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