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Software-defined radio
This article is written for beginners, higher level material can be found on wikipedia, radioreference forums, and reddit.com/r/rtlsdr
Software defined radio is the means of listening to radio waves using the combination of low level hardware, and software processing. While non-SDR techniques use physical hardware to demodulate FM and AM, In SDR raw data from the receiver gets sent into the USB port, and software is used to control the modulation. The only drawbacks of SDR are bandwidth constraints and processing. Since uncompressed unmodulated data is coming through a PC interface (USB mostly), a high speed connection and a computer with decent specs is required. A Single RTL-SDR May use up to 3.4MB, CPU usage varies on the tuner software you use. Using software defined radio opposed to regular radio gives you the ability to see signals you would normally only hear. Your eyes can cover a very wide bandwidth of signals on a computer screen, while your ears can only comprehend a single spoken conversation at a time.
SDR models
SDRs come in many shapes in sizes, from the $8 RTL-SDR to $2000 USRP(with daughterboards) There are also many SDR's such as the HackRF, USRP, FunCube, etc.List of SDRs When you buy an SDR, you get what you pay for. More expensive SDR's are purpose built for receiving, and can handle things such as GSM spoofing, where an unencrypted GSM tower can be simulated to capture SMS in a cleartext fashion.
RTLSDR
A great beginner SDR is the RTL-SDR It features a receive frequency range of 25-1700MHz, 2.048MHz bandwidth and is priced low enough that beginners can see whether radio is a hobby they want to get into(R820T model).
RTL-SDRs come with various tuner chips, the most widely used tuner is the R820T, with the E4000 coming in a close second. The E4000 is a discontinued model and is usually priced higher than R820T models. R820T tuners are generally better for reception of trunked radio systems (digital police radio).
The RTLSDR began its life as a DVB-T OTA TV tuner (a tv tuner for europe). China began bulk manufacturing these TV tuners for the european market. It was later found that a hacked driver could be installed that let the user use the dongle as an SDR.
Currently R820T RTLSDRs can be bought for as low as $8 on eBay with free shipping R820Ts on eBay
HackRF
The HackRF is a DARPA funded project, it aims to provide innovation and research in the SDR field. It's much more powerful than the RTL-SDR, much more sensitive, covers a greater frequency range. The HackRF starts at $300, has both RX and TX functionality from 30 MHz to 6 GHz, bandwidth of 20MHz. During DARPA funding, beta units, the HackRF Jawbreaker were given to hundreds of testers for free. The production version was funded through KickStarter. The campaign was successfully funded on September 4th 2013 and will be available to the public after donators get their HackRF's. KickStarter Page
- Transmitting
- TX functionality on the HackRF is limited in power because RF theory says you must have an antenna length that corresponds to the wavelength you are sending. For example sending 5Watts over the wrong size antenna will cause a buildup of standing waves, and may fry the transmitter. To prevent this, the antenna build into the breadboard of the HackRF is only designed for ultra low power, good enough for experimentation, but not for serious broadcasting.
Possibilities
SDR's have endless possibilities. Because all demodulation is done in software, no new hardware is needed to decode, for example, a new digital voice mode. All the programmer has to do is write code to convert the raw samples from USB to the correct format data.
Software
Software is available for Windows GNU/Linux and OSX.
