AIRWAVE AUTONOMY
Whether you’re on-grid or off, information is king. The data traveling around us via radio and microwaves can provide a wealth of intelligence about what’s going on, be it in our neighborhood or around the world, for anyone who can tap into it and make use of it. Thanks to advances in Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers, anyone with a couple hundred dollars and some modest skills can turn their computer or tablet into a signals intelligence platform that was once the exclusive, multimillion-dollar domain of governments.
In this series, we’ll discuss the basics of SDR, from selecting the right receiver and antennas, to basic setup for gathering both communications intelligence (COMINT; listening to audio transmissions) and signals intelligence (SIGINT; receiving other types of signals such as tracking aircraft or getting weather satellite images).
The Setup: What is SDR?
While traditional radio receivers are hard-wired to handle only specific bands and modes, software defined radios (SDRs) leverage computer processors and software to perform most of the demodulation. This allows a small package of radio frequency (RF) sensing hardware to
