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  • What is "software defined radio"?

    From Richard Owlett@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 1 16:40:01 2025
    My father was a ham in the 50's.
    I had a 2nd class commercial license in the 60's.
    I had never even heard of "software defined radio" until multiple
    replies in debian-user a week ago mentioned SDR dongles.

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  • From Christoph Berg@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 1 17:00:01 2025
    Re: Richard Owlett
    My father was a ham in the 50's.
    I had a 2nd class commercial license in the 60's.
    I had never even heard of "software defined radio" until multiple replies in debian-user a week ago mentioned SDR dongles.

    It's basically an AD converter between the antenna and a computer, and
    then all signal processing/filtering/downmixing/etc is done in
    software. For transmitting, the same thing the other way round, a DA
    converter and a PA.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio

    Christoph

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  • From Adrian Musceac@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 2 09:40:01 2025
    On Tuesday, 1 July 2025 17:13:21 EEST Richard Owlett wrote:
    My father was a ham in the 50's.
    I had a 2nd class commercial license in the 60's.
    I had never even heard of "software defined radio" until multiple
    replies in debian-user a week ago mentioned SDR dongles.

    Hi,

    There is an excellent online book explaining in simple language some software defined radio topics here: https://pysdr.org/content/intro.html

    The big advantage is greater flexibility compared to running DSP in ASICs. >From a free software perspective, lots of big name amateur radio vendors use "SDR" as a marketing keyword for their closed source gear, but it is not true software defined radio unless they give you the capability to program your own waveform into the device.

    Adrian

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  • From Richard Owlett@21:1/5 to Adrian Musceac on Wed Jul 2 15:20:01 2025
    On 7/2/25 2:20 AM, Adrian Musceac wrote:
    On Tuesday, 1 July 2025 17:13:21 EEST Richard Owlett wrote:
    My father was a ham in the 50's.
    I had a 2nd class commercial license in the 60's.
    I had never even heard of "software defined radio" until multiple
    replies in debian-user a week ago mentioned SDR dongles.

    Hi,

    There is an excellent online book explaining in simple language some software defined radio topics here: https://pysdr.org/content/intro.html


    That and Christoph's link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio resolve my confusion.

    In my original debian-user post[1] I asked was there a USB device that
    would tune to a particular FM station and emit audio &/or MP3 data.

    The responders, having seen "computer" and "radio" close together,
    jumped to *confusion* declaring SDR the solution, [ignoring that I was
    working and thus my CPU was otherwise engaged ;].

    Thank you both

    [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2025/06/msg00413.html

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