
Software-Defined Radio for Engineers [pdf] - app4soft
http://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/design-handbooks/Software-Defined-Radio-for-Engineers-2018/SDR4Engineers.pdf
======
app4soft
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...](http://www.analog.com/en/education/education-
library/software-defined-radio-for-engineers.html)

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

[2]
[https://github.com/sdrforengineers/LectureMaterials/releases...](https://github.com/sdrforengineers/LectureMaterials/releases/tag/v1.0)

~~~
ChuckMcM
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
Primarily because it can also send.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That and a price of $99 vs $300 for the low end of the "high end" SDRs.

~~~
jjoonathan
But if you want to actually use the chip in a design, it's still $300.

------
jokoon
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...

~~~
mmanulis
have you seen this: [https://www.rtl-sdr.com/questasdr-new-rtl-sdr-software-
for-a...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/questasdr-new-rtl-sdr-software-for-android/)

You could take something like a NooElec
([http://www.nooelec.com/](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
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

~~~
mmanulis
GNU Radio has a guide of how to compile it for Android. Having said that, if
you're just trying to run it on your phone, it doesn't (usually) have enough
power to do anything "fun". You need more capability than your average Android
device. The other option is to have something a little more powerful running
GNU Radio stack and then control that via your phone :)

------
madengr
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.

------
rilut
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](https://github.com/watson/airplanejs)

~~~
trishmapow2
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](https://github.com/trishmapow/rf-jam-replay)

------
swebs
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/](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/)

~~~
zokier
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.

~~~
madengr
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_
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...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Software_Receiver_Design.html?id=sw86nwEACAAJ&source=kp_cover)

------
signa11
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 :)

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

------
hatsunearu
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!

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

------
DINKDINK
Some of the fun:
[http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/)

------
hardmath123
The last few pages have a nice general history of communications. Gives some
great perspective.

------
olfactory
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)

