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Handhelds Hardware

Linux Powers First Handheld Software Radio 161

Posted by timothy from the please-productize dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at LinuxDevices.com, Vanu Technology is demonstrating what it claims represents the world's first handheld 'software radio' using an iPAQ PDA running Linux at a conference in Washington DC today. Vanu apparently has implemented the signal processing functions on the iPAQ's XScale processor, and their software uses POSIX APIs to make it platform independent. Software radios implement multiple radio standards and frequency bands in software, rather than hardware. A standard iPAQ expansion pack houses the radio transceiver."
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Linux Powers First Handheld Software Radio More

Linux Powers First Handheld Software Radio

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  • This would add even more value to the already wonderful Z.
  • But I think transistors have been handling that whole portable radio thing just fine without Linux to help them. Sorry.
    • I am assuming that this is useful as a Pocket Radio? [linuxdevices.com] err... scratch that look at the size of that bad boy! Maybe it is just another "we can do it so why not" kind of thing.
    • And transistors/other solid state analog circuits are considerably more stable than Linux, or any operating system for that matter.
    • Don't be sorry that you're an elitist mother fucker. :)
    • One of the benefits of software defined radio is that you can tune in any number of channels simultaneously...

      This would have many uses in the high-end radio communication field. Although I'm not sure anyone really needs a handheld version...

      • Re:Call me old fashioned... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GoRK ( 10018 ) *
        Erm.. No. That's not technically true.

        Although one of the little whiz-bang demos of software radio generally involves tuning two FM radio stations or something at the same time, there's nothing particularly unique about a software-defined radio that makes it possible. Couple the right wideband receiver with the right circuts to do some off-center modulation and you could build an analog radio that would tune a couple stations at the same time too.

        It's simply a question of how much bandwidth you can tune s
        • To quote the PDF:

          The RF-to-digital block is implemented as a card that covers the frequency range from 30 MHz to 2.5Gz
          Later:
          The RF card contains several antenna ports. The active port can be selected through software to enable use of different antennas for different bands, or multiple can be activated for applications that exploit diversity.
          It seems that they have the analog part pretty much handled.

    • Get with it, dude (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:34PM (#5942099)
      Holy cheeses, man, who the hell wants to listen to a $5 transistor radio when you can hear the same thing on $1500 worth of uber-geek gear?
    • Yes, and what do we need color TV's for anyway? We all dream in black and white...right?

    • Re:Call me old fashioned... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YellowElectricRat ( 637662 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:39PM (#5942122) Journal

      You're looking at this from the wrong level - this thing still has all the hardware to receive RF, the funky thing is that the radio demodulation/modulation et al is programmable. At the band's this is running at, it's not so interesting, but once you get up to 900MHz (and later at 2.4GHz+), you essentially have a device that can communicate with any RF device on its supported bands.

      What this means (in the future, with 2.4GHz+ capable devices) is that one device (be it your PDA, mobile phone, PCMCIA card) can be a GSM phone, can be a CDMA phone, can be a 3G phone, can be a CB/commercial/police radio receiver, it could even be used for 802.11b or Bluetooth. The possibilities for software radio are mind boggling. Linux is really irrelevant in the scheme of things, it's essentially just used to bolt the stuff together - it's the underlying technology that is impressive.

      • Re:Call me old fashioned... (Score:5, Funny)

        by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @11:41PM (#5942386)
        The possibilities for software radio are mind boggling.

        And the short length of time your batteries will last will boggle the mind even more. Using a general purpose CPU to do all of that comm stuff would use many times more power then dedicated ASIC's. To find out how much this would suck, insert an 802.11b card into the PC Card sleeve on an iPaq, do a constant ping, and run an app that utilized 100% cpu.
      • "Linux is really irrelevant in the scheme of things, it's essentially just used to bolt the stuff together" Ugg I am such a tool....
      • Yeah, and a PLD wireless transciever to reach those higher frequencies would be even more fun.
        But I think your casual dismissal of the relevance of open source is misguided. In a closed source environment where a single vendor controls vast swaths of the market, there's little incentive to innovate in disruptive ways. This is a disruptive technology as it would potentially make many incompatible pieces of equipment irrelevant. While it could technically have been done in any language I would not say tha

    • Re:Call me old fashioned... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by trenton ( 53581 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `lnotnert'> on Monday May 12, 2003 @11:04PM (#5942209) Homepage
      I'm pinning my hopes on software to revolutionize the entire wireless industry. And by entire, I mean anything with a processing unit and transceiver.

      For example, with software radio, cell phone manufacturers can make the guts of one phone and sell it in every market in the world. Equipment providers can make one cell phone tower, and use it everywhere. Wanna upgrade to a new standard? No problem. Distribute new software to the handsets and base stations and you're done. Imagine being able to roll out a new protocol to take advantage of just-made-available spectrum instantly.

      Your one cell phone could act as a wireless ethernet adaptor, a bluetooth adaptor, an FM radio, an AM radio, a VHF radio, whatever! The promise of this technology is incredible.

    • Yeah, but don't forget that in the US those transistors were banned from letting you listen to cell networks.

      I doubt that's likely to happen with a software radio (being that it would be hacked within minutes). Free airwaves for all, again! :-)
    • And the acubus has been handling calculations just fine. A software radio is not your fathers transistor radio.

  • Cost (Score:4, Informative)

    by Echelon309 ( 534767 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:08PM (#5941986)
    This looks really cool, but it seems that the cost will be prohibitive for people who just want to listen to the radio. As the article mentions, the ability to operate on many different formats is probably more geared towards industry uses. Oh, and of course it will save lives because emergency response teams will be able to communicate better ;)

  • irony (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
    We developed compressed audio formats to combat the mindless crap that makes it onto the radio.

    Now we are using a processor with many million transistors to take the place of a single transistor radio. Anyways, this is a cool accomplishment, with or without a practical application.

    • Re:irony (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ocelotbob ( 173602 )
      Ah, but therein lies the rub. this does have useful applications; it's a transceiver, not just a receiver. Thus, you can use this as a packet modem/whatever. Think long range wireless and the like; it'll be a toy for most at first until someone plays with it enough to use everything a good wireless connection can provide.
    • With this, you could broadcast/recieve raw Ogg streams, be them video, audio, text, images, whatever.

      You could over simplify just about anything. "We went from satellite, to cable, back to satellite." The differences are more numerous than the similarities...

  • One of the concerns (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Froze ( 398171 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:11PM (#5941996)
    of software radio is the ability to modify the code and tromp all over someone elses legally protected frequency range. Some of the big nonos include sending on ATC (air traffic controll) frequencies and numerous other military and civil service bands.

    Someone corect me if I am wrong, but couldn't the transceiver be built with hardware filters on those bands and thus sidestep the issue of broadcast interference? I know this is not as nice as having a fully programmable software radio transmitter, but otherwise I really don't see the FCC granting any kind of production licensing for these.

    Anyone else have solutions to this dilemma?

    • Re:One of the concerns (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zeebs ( 577100 ) <.rsdrew. .at. .gmail.com.> on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:37PM (#5942114)
      ... Anyone else have solutions to this dilemma?

      I sure do, off-shore production and smuggling operation. If I want to wreak havoc and chaos it is my god given consitiutionally protected right to do so.

      Ahem... Excuse me, what I ment to say was that it's only a tool. You know guns don't have special attachments on their sights so you can only shoot in-season game. Hold the user responsible, not the maker or the tool.
      • Spoken like a true libertarian :)
      • "Radios that disrupt Air Traffic Control and ILS signals don't kill people, people kill people."
      • Me thinks your analogy to guns is a little skewed.

        First of all, I have never seen a gun that was designed to shoot only one type of target or a narrow range of targets, ala todays hardware dependent frequency generators for transmittors.

        Second, if such guns had existed, do you really think that we would have the freedom to use them the way we do now? I mean seriously, no manufacturer would design the weapon to shoot month old babys, right?

        Just a little food for thought. FYI, I don't condone restriction o

    • Yeah - it's called the FCC and includes the process of type acceptance for a manufacturer to sell or even advertise radio equipment.

      Anyone can purchase a transmitter or two-way radio and begin transmitting without a license on top of legit communications.

      This is an old problem with an old solution. Do a 'net search for "Riley's Hammer" ...

      For an example of this in action see fcc.gov [fcc.gov]

    • I don't see this being a dilemma. The folks who know how to stomp on restricted frequencies should know not to, and if they don't, they'll get busted.

      One of the huge benifits of software radio is that we no longer need restricted bands. The infrastructure we have in place will take a while to adjust to this, of course, but it will happen, and then this will not be a problem.

    • "Someone corect me if I am wrong, but couldn't the transceiver be built with hardware filters on those bands and thus sidestep the issue of broadcast interference? I know this is not as nice as having a fully programmable software radio transmitter, but otherwise I really don't see the FCC granting any kind of production licensing for these."

      Translated:

      This is really cool. Can't we cripple it to protect existing interests?
    • Someone knowledgeable about the inner workings of radio could put together a rig that could transmit on any frequency he wished, using cheap off the shelf electronics components. I'm pretty sure you can get schematics online too. It's not really a new problem that software radio introduces, it just makes it a bit easier to achieve the same thing.

    • Arsehole. Anyone with the tiniest amount of electronics knowledge could build a very simple radio transmitter which will trample all over any band you care to name. A hint though - much higher than 400MHz is hard to make yourself without going to special techniques like stripline and the like.
    • Does it matter? A standard radio could easily be modified to tromp all over the bands and while the software one can crash, the hardware one could have its joints dry out changing the frequency... GSM phones typically use a software radio, anyway...

  • But.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cali Thalen ( 627449 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:12PM (#5942002) Homepage
    Yeah, but does it run Li... ...oh, never mind....

  • Unless the software solution offers significant improvements/advantages (like super fine tuning, rms, ta, like the stuff on the car audio tuners) and catching international radio stations, I just don't really see the point of having linux in something that works great as it is already (i.e., the old fashioned way)...

    • Re:Is it a real "plus" ? (Score:4, Funny)

      by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @11:39PM (#5942375) Homepage Journal
      significant improvements/advantages (like super fine tuning, rms, ta, like the stuff on the car audio tuners)

      Lets not get carried away. Theres NO way Stallman will fit in the box.
    • Unless the software solution offers significant improvements/advantages (like super fine tuning, rms, ta, like the stuff on the car audio tuners) and catching international radio stations

      The advantage is that someone can post code on the internet for things like super fine tuning, rms, ta, or catching international stations. Then you just download it and BAM, you have a radio with that feature.

      You can download cellphone code, or beeper code, or video-cellphone code, or SMS, or GPS, or a radio controller
  • Still available! [ebay.com] I can't believe that people can still be ham radio dorks in 2003...God bless geeks and their intractibility!
    • ham radio is still alive and kicking, i believe, although obviously not with the same popularity. i have at least 1 friend, and another online friend, that are into ham radio.

      thanks for a new vocab word too ;)

    • Hey! I resemble that remark. Ham radio is still alive and kicking. Hams are just as much geeks as any other computer geek. Some of us (like me) enjoy computers and amateur radio. I have spent many thousands of dollars in ham gear and many thousands of dollars in computer gear. The only difference is not only will my ham radio gear work without the internet, but it will hold it's value far longer than any of my computer equipment. DSP radios are not new, our local group here is working on a DSP based data ra
    • Ummm... MS Project for Mac 4.0?

      What's that got to do with the price of cheese?
    • Yeah, funny you should mention that. Maybe these guys [tentec.com] should get involved. Or maybe these instead. [kenwood.net] Software-defined radios have been built and marketed for hams for quite a while now.

      I haven't seen one available for VHF/UHF until now. I'm sure someone will correct me though.

      llamafresh
  • radios in software......instead of hardware....*scratches head*
    so listening in on cop band and other unautorized channels could be a few lines of code away then...
    nah too f***ing good to be true.some biatch with a herfgun come along and take it out anyway*continues daydreaming*

    • The first thing that crossed my mind was that this would be superb for listening to "unauthorized" frequencies.

      Too bad all the fun stuff (phones, cops, etc.) are mostly digital now.

      • oh...we were just discussing cops and military using tube radios in the HERFgun article earlier,because they tend to continue to work in case of national emergencies such as nuke attack(the E.M. field wont take em out like solid state electronics.)well heck ,if it is software maybe someone will make a patch and we can listen to information being freed.LOL

        • When I was in the Army, I was a radio operator for a "special weapons" unit. We had old, tube type radios as backup for our high tech digital satellite terminals.

          Yeah, software will allow listening on any freq, but who cares if all you hear is digital white noise...

  • CF version? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Derg ( 557233 ) <alex.nunley@gmail.com> on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:33PM (#5942092) Journal
    Is there the possibility of turning what currently fits into a iPaq addon into a CF card? That, imho, would be a really killer device..

    just a poor geeks dream...

  • Expansion pack (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonent AT stone ... intclark DOT net> on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:33PM (#5942093) Journal
    Isn't it just a pcmcia interface? So potentially this item could be reproduced for a laptop computer?

    • Re:Expansion pack (Score:3, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Well the current prototype is the size of the entire PC-Card sleeve for the iPaq so I don't think it's quite ready for even Type 3 PC Card form factor.

  • not just an fm receiver... (Score:5, Informative)

    by KingJeremyTheWicked_ ( 672887 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @10:54PM (#5942170)
    Someone else got it right. This is more like being able to configure a particular device to do any wireless standard without requiring custom RF hardware, ASICs, and DSPs to do the signal processing and modulation/demodulation for each technology it handles. All the protocols and such (if we're talking about something like a GSM/TDMA/CDMA phone) would already be handled in software anyway. It's the low layer h/w receiver, transmitter, and signal processing (i.e. radio) stuff that's expensive to design and build and fit into portable devices. It sounds like this is their reference design and probably their intention is to try and license this technology to PDA and mobile phone makers.

  • next privacy issue? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by torre ( 620087 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @11:36PM (#5942360)
    What exists to stop this from becoming the next supper scanner?...

    The current configuration of the device is said to support commercial analog FM radio services, including Family Band Radio as well as the public safety APCO 25 digital standard, with future prototypes under development that will include operational capabilities of up to 900 MHz and support for cellular and PCS standards such as TDMA and GSM.

    With such a huge frequency range under its belt and the fact that it's all process via software all it needs is some voice recognition software [sourceforge.net] and it could become the ultimate scanner/big brother toy. Simply put, you enter a few key words, and it scans the airways for you looking for them until it finds them and either logs it or tunes you into it. The NSA has had stuff like this for listening in on international call, but I don't know if I like the idea of my neighbour being able to selectively listen in on my calls especially with such power...

    me->Hi I'd like to buy blah
    staff-> will that be Visa or MasterCard
    me-> Visa...
    person with smart scanner->Chaching!

    • Well, maybe technology will force people who broadcast their voice all over the known universe to realize that they are broadcasting their voice all over the known universe. Anybody with $0.30 in their pockets can order the parts necessary to eavesdrop on your phone call with hardware. Why is it scarier that you can do it in software?

      • Re:next privacy issue? (Score:4, Informative)

        by torre ( 620087 ) on Tuesday May 13, 2003 @12:33AM (#5942601)
        "Anybody with $0.30 in their pockets can order the parts necessary to eavesdrop on your phone call with hardware. Why is it scarier that you can do it in software?"

        First off I'd like to see you make a pcs decoder for $0.30 seeing that its a digital signal.

        Secondly, its not scarier in software per say... but rather the automation that can be done. Just like spammers can send out millions of emails each night with a few machines hooked up to the net, so too can this make it too easy to use. With just a few scanners automatically looking over the 49 Mhz (old cordless), 900 Mhz cordless, 800Mhz cell phones, PCS standard frequencies such as TDMA and GSM and any other private band increases the odds of finding something... Now mount this into a truck and drive it into a residential location or a really busy business location and poof.. with a twenty of these little babies with voice recognition aided scanning they could easily scan airwaves looking for potential targets... Its bad enough one person may be able to listen in... Its another once things get automated. You run a much bigger chance of being on the receiving end of privacy invasion.

        To drive my point in... say these things (all numbers are fictitious to illustrate point) end up costing 40 bux in parts each. Now, somebody with a clue with the potential adds keyword voice recognition scanning (which includes a vast amount of freely available information to aid this just like the link I posted in my post) to the software so they can listen in and start recording once they find a specific keyword.

        Now the scary part..
        A typical $1000 PC say can handle 10 of them per machine...that's $1400 to scan 10 channels at a time. You add 10 PC in the back of truck for 14000 and you can scan 100 channels at time for useful information... if there's nothing on a particular channel say somebody hung up, it could always hunt for open channels... So they guy with this truck parked on the street in the middle of wall street drinking his latté now has all the inside trading information that he wants and retires with such a small investment.

        Technology is a great thing... but with such power the old saying applies. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

        • Dude I can't get voice recognition to work reliably when fed by a voice cancelling headphone on a 1.2Ghz machine and a couple hours of training, why do you think you would be able to track tons of CMDA signals (this is not trivial due to the way CDMA works), decode the audio or random voices, and process it with voice recognition software? It would cost a lot more than $14K to do this over 100 channels. Now targeted scanning could be a problem, but then maybe I can get my freaking cellular provider to turn
          • Doh, that of course should read noise cancelling headset, maybe 3am is too late to post....

          • Re:next privacy issue? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by torre ( 620087 )
            "Dude I can't get voice recognition to work reliably when fed by a voice cancelling headphone on a 1.2Ghz machine and a couple hours of training,..."

            Funny.... I've had reliable keyword recognition since way back in '95 via my P133 and IBM via voice on OS/2 and the Mwave dsp addon board. Keyword isn't that big of a deal (relatively that is) if your selected vocabulary is relatively small. Keyword voice recognition is an almost solved problem and is used often from automated phone systems with amazing accur

        • Of course, frequency Hopping & CDMA techniques were made to prevent this at the beginning (jump frequently eg 1000 times/s from a frequency to another).

          Besides, GSM was implemnted properly and the channel is considered open to eavesdropping. So all communications are cyphered with a session key, negociated with the network.

          • Besides, GSM was implemnted properly and the channel is considered open to eavesdropping. So all communications are cyphered with a session key, negociated with the network.

            Unfortunately, that key takes Here is a page talking about it: both A5/1 and A5/2 are trivial to crack - probably significantly easier than receiving the radio signal itself!

            ISTR France insisted on limiting GSM's crypto strength; at the time the standards were being written, their crypto laws made US export restrictions seem positivel

        • Scary?

          Frabkly that's a bit bleeding heart liberal, isn't it?

          We'll use this to spy on foreign nations and corporations and make sure they're not stealing our secrets.

          And if we do a little insider trading, that's only fair given that we - American taxpayers - have to bear the financial burden of doing all this spying.

        • Aargh!!! Hot button alert!

          It's per se, not "per say"!!!!

        • Look, you are totally missing my point. Firstly, I can easily build a radio to eavesdrop on your cordless phone calls (49MHz, 900MHz FH) with parts that probably cost less than their own shipping fee. Secondly, for rather more money, Innovative Computer Engineering [ice-online.com] will sell you enough DSPs on a PCI card to tune and record 32 channels of whatever band you desire. You feed it IF, it feeds you whatever you want. They have been selling this hardware for YEARS. So the invention of a stupid little Palm with
    • The hard part here would be getting a RF subsystem with the kind of range you are talking about. As someone else has pointed out in another comment below, software radio is essentially applying a wideband analog-to-digital conversion, followed by software demodulation (bit like a winmodem, come to think of it).

      To get the whole range from 0 to 2.4GHz or so sampled, you would need to be sampling at above 5Giga Samples per second (GSPS). Realistic sampling at least today is closer to few 10s of MSPS. Instead,
    • I was under the impression that GSM phones encrypted their communications, exactly to prevent this kind of thing? Of course, I don't know about those other systems you've got in the US, and if you're still running analogue phones, you're hosed, but in most of the world, you should be fairly secure.

      Certainly in the UK the insecurity of analogue systems came very much to the fore with a few high-profile scanning incidents, one of which involved a rather saucy conversation between Prince Charles and his lover [ohnonews.com]
    • What exists to stop this from becoming the next supper scanner?...

      huh ? you want to find out what's in your evening meal ?

  • So this doesn't count? (Score:2, Informative)

    by jaaron ( 551839 )
    tkcRadio [thekompany.com] doesn't count then? Okay, so it's internet radio not normal AM/FM, but still, tkcRadio has been out for a while. [and yes, it's for the Zaurus, of course!]
    • tkcRadio [thekompany.com] doesn't count then?

      Nope.

      This article is about a fully programmable communication device. Listening to the radio is just one program. Load up a different program and you have a cellphone, or a beeper, or a TV, or a wireless access point, or a CB.

      Just doenload a new program off the internet and it becomes a garage door opener if you want.

      -

  • The point is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by munter ( 619803 ) on Tuesday May 13, 2003 @03:43AM (#5943101)
    Eliminating government control of spectrum.

    You guys are all missing the point. If you have a software radio you have something that is inherently able to adapt to the spectral environment that it currently "sees". Develop logic that deals with interference, and you've eliminated the concept of management bands and spectrum management agencies. You've essentially automated the process that these agencies seek to fufill, and you've eliminated the politics, lobbying mechanisms and the grip that the old world broadcast industry has on the raw resource that should be essentially free for everyone to use.

    Some people may argue that you've taken revenue (licensing) away from central government. That is true. But my belief is that Central Government should be focussing on developing innovative smart technology rather than maintaining archaic processes. Revenue through process rather than red-tape.

    Are radiowaves the electromagnetic equivalent of GNU bandwidth?

    Check here [stanford.edu] and here [reed.com] for clue.

    somewhere in texas, a village is missing it's idiot

  • The article mentions how this could be useful for "first responders", like, presumably, the emergency workers who arrived at the WTC, where the police radios couldn't talk to the FD radios.

    Might using software radios introduce a new risk for emergency workers? Might the software include a security hole vandals or terrorists could use to disrupt all the emergency services radios at once?

  • Winmodem of radio (Score:4, Informative)

    by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Tuesday May 13, 2003 @05:59AM (#5943425)
    These things are the radio equivalent of winmodems - cheap frontend with an already-available processor. They have the potential to get really really cheap, just like winmodems. And like winmodems, in the beginning the processing power needed is annoyingly high. These days noone care that 2% of the CPU is spent on the winmodem. One day, noone will care that 10% of the CPU is spent on software radio. Instead they will love how they can get access to WLAN, bluetooth, and cellular with one simple and cheap device. Oh and listen to radio, whether analog or digital.

    • One day, noone will care that 10% of the CPU is spent on software radio.

      In general you're right, but I would point out that in order to be truly successful, SDR must be workable on a mobile, battery-powered device. We're a far cry away from that now. Battery time is not mentioned in the article and it's no wonder -- the demo IPAQ probably runs for less than 30 minutes on battery in radio mode (a pure guess, YMMV, etc).

      Also, I would point out that although the XScale (at least the variant that I'm

  • This would be a much more useful announcment if they had written the software for Palm's Tungsten T [palm.com] and the on-board C55x DSP half of its OMAP 1510 [ti.com] processor.

    This way:

    a) It wouldn't hog 100% of your CPU... you'd actually be able to, you know, DO STUFF while listening to the radio

    b) You wouldn't hose your whole battery in virtually no time. The C55x has a WAY better power/mips ratio than XScale, not to mention you're going to use way less mips in the first place by virtue of it being a DSP that's a
    • Actually, I just bought a Tungsten C, which has the same 400MHz XScale processor as the top of the line iPaq. It'd be nice if they ported this program for this device.

      My thoughts on the Tungsten C? VERY nice machine, a little cheap feeling (plastic case VS metal, as they did with the T and other Palm models), wonderful features, but lacking a microphone (has 2.5mm earbud /mic jack). The screen and processor are WONDERFUL, but I feel that the software just hasn't been tuned to this much power yet. Things s

  • Patent it NOW! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ja-Ja-Jamin ( 661760 )
    Before some LLC patent leach does!

  • Its not the first... (Score:3, Informative)

    by excessive ( 621757 ) on Tuesday May 13, 2003 @07:30AM (#5943728)
    It is not [compuserve.com] the first [mlabsys.com] software [comsec.com] radio [tu-darmstadt.de]

    Besides which, GSM mobile phones typically use they're processing power to allow them to do fast frequency hopping, etc.

  • SDR has been done before. WinRadio [winradio.com] has a "DC to Daylight" receiver that fits on a PCI card, and allows you to play with the demodulation. A lot of amateurs are working are working with this, and one gives you the VB source for the demodulator with a pretty front end. (I don't want to /. him, so look for SDR-1000 at Google).

    The interesting part of this is that it was built into a hand-held computer for the first time, and the practical implementation means that any new radio service is a software upgrad

  • Put together 4 (a Beowolf cluster!), and you could get surround-sound.
  • Is it just me or does this start to look like the software defined modem (aka winmodem) craze? What's to stop hardware manufacturers from releasing 802.11b gear based around a software radio?

    Sure it'd be able to adapt to newer standards but I really don't want my cpu time wasted with host based encoding/decoding, especially if it turns out I need a proprietary driver to do so.

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