Software Defined Radios
By Daniel Yang, K6DPY
It seems Software Defined Radios* (SDR) are popping up everywhere
these days. As personal computers, and integrated circuits in
general, get more powerful with the march of Moore's Law, this has
made SDRs more capable and less expensive to own and operate. This
in turn fosters the proliferation of SDRs for many fields, including
amateur radio.
Top of the line SDRs have recently reached the state of the art where RF is sampled directly from the antenna and converted to digital signals. This eliminates age-old problems associated with analog mixing and analog IF. These are exciting times for amateur radio. We amateurs of course are interested in the transceiver variety of SDR, not just receive only.
Here is the current, not necessarily
complete, list of Software Defined Transceivers (in production and
under development) targeted towards the amateur market.
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*The accepted definition of a real
Software Defined Radio is one "where components that have typically
been implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers,
oscillators, modulators/demodulators, detectors. etc.) are instead
implemented using software running on a personal computer or other
embedded computing devices (embedded in the SDR)" . This is made
possible by the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which has come
into its own over the last twenty years. FPGAs differ from
Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) in that FPGAs are
field programmable, while ASICs are designed with a certain purpose
in mind and can no longer be altered after it is manufactured.
See the links below.
Daniel Yang,
K6DPY
Introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio
Software Defined Transceivers:
http://ae9rb.com/
Apache Labs Products
KickStarter bladeRF - USB 3.0 Software Defined Radio
KX3 Transceiver
Ettus USRP Instant SDR Kit
http://www.flex-radio.com/
http://www.genesisradio.com.au/G59/
http://openhpsdr.org/
http://ossmann.blogspot.com/2012/06/introducing-hackrf.html
NW Digital Radio Products
SoftRock RXTX Ensemble Transceiver Kit
Zeus ZS-1 Transceiver
For further information, contact Daniel Yang, K6DPY.