How software-defined radio could revolutionize wireless

The Phi hopes to do for radio what Apple I did for computing—spark innovation.

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[Jotorious]

As someone who works on/with SDRs pretty much daily, I think this article is full of fluff. SDR has been around for the better part of 2 decades. The USRP N210 costs like $1700 dollars, for a hobbyist grade SDR. Buy an Epic Bitshark for $1400 and a Xilinx S601 development board for $299 and get an sdr platfrom supported by former Motorola Engineers and the Xilinx ecosystem.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

I'm sitting here thinking that SDR could be more of a success with more modest goals.

 

[daggar]

I don't agree. The only reason it's not more common is that most people just aren't that malicious. Yes, the equipment to snoop on phone signals is expensive, but jammers are dead easy to build using parts you can get from an electronics store for pocket change. If I really wanted to I could literally walk over to my garage and put together a jammer in a few hours. But I don't want to. Yes there will always be people who want to sabotage everyone elses fun, but they're such a small minority that they're not usually that much of a problem.

I think you're overly optimistic. The reason why you have the skill to build a transmitter in your garage (years spent on technical training in college &/or work) is the very reason why you don't find it worthwhile to do so. When this same capability is available to high school kids with a couple hundred bucks and a GUI toolkit they found on 4chan, the likelihood of abuse goes WAY up.

Also, the analogy to annoying loudspeakers or laser pointers is faulty. Almost everyone has the necessary sensors (ears & eyes) to quickly & accurately identify the source of those emissions. Vanishingly few people have directional radio detectors that operate across the frequency range these new devices can produce.

First, not everyone needs them; only enough law enforcement officials to show up and respond to the call.

Second, the very technology you're describing --by definition doubles as detection gear. It won't be held by 'vanishingly few people.' If it can be had by 'high school kids with a couple hundred bucks,' it will be available to every police department in the country. If 4chan is coding up 'GUI's', then some electronics company will make this gear with some direction-finder routine and a push-button interface that cops will be able to use after two hours' training. ("If they say their wifi is screwed up, hit the WIFI button and follow the arrow. If they say their FM radio is jammed, hit the FM button and...").

So yeah knee-jerk response in favor of artificial barriers to entry is as bogus as every other argument for artificial barriers to entry.

 

[just6979]

"it was even briefly priced at the same point as the Apple I, $666.66, but has since been placed at $750"

Why doesn't this read:
"it was even briefly priced the same as the Apple I, $666.66, but has since been priced at $750"

When did this strange use (not just here) of "price point" instead of just "price" come into being? And how does "placed" replace "priced"?

 

[Brian_EE]

In my job I work with a bunch of Harris LOS Software radios; the software defined part was actually the main reason the military ended up with these. Being able to install a firmware update to enable an entirely new waveform is totally awesome but has a downside.

Now we pay MILLIONS for what amounts to a firmware update. Maybe I'm a bit more old school but installing a few MB of software on existing hardware at tens of thousands of dollars a pop just doesn't seem like its worth the money.

How about some fact checking.
1. The company you complain about designed, built, tested that equipment on their own dime to give the DoD an alternative to the $6 Billion that was wasted on GMR.

2. That few MB of software is the cumulative result of tens of thousands of man-hours per upgrade, that covers design, implementation, regression testing, and maintenence, that once again is borne up front by private R&D money.

3. Ask yourself if you would rather have those radios or nothing at all on the battlefield. For millions you have from "Company H" what you couldn't buy with billions from "Company B".

 

[Brian_EE]

...
Its impossible to do full open source on fpgas with the current generation (need the manufactuers tools to do synthesis , mapping and bitstream generation)
...

I think you confuse the terms "open source" and "free".

If the HDL (Verilog, VHDL, System-C, etc) is open and freely available, then it is truly open-source.

Just because the synthesis and routing tools aren't free doesn't mean that it isn't open source.

Most vendor-supplied FPGA tools do have a demo version (usually device-size restricted) and the local FAE can get time-based licenses for you. You just have to be a little resourceful.

 

[Invictus227]

What happens when people decide to intentionally be malicious?

It's hard to say for sure, but I think there's a very good chance that will not actually end up being a huge deal, at least once society adjusts. The key factor is that, of the entire range of technology crimes, or even crimes in general, it's hard to think of many where a person or item announces the problem more clearly. "Maliciousness" and "incompetence" appear to be similar here: someone sets up a device that, either by intention or just simple misconfiguration, ends up being a bad EM citizen and pumps out too much power too randomly, thus acting like a jammer and mucking things up for others. However, by definition anything operating with that kind of power is dead easy to find by anyone at all. The exact same physics that cause it to mess with other network equipment also means it's a big fat "Here I Am" sign.

So it'll be easy to see who or what is being bad, and thus I think tools and social norms can be developed to handle it. It seems very similar to noise pollution really, if someone is partying too loudly and bothers the neighbors then the first step is just calling them up or walking over and asking them to turn it down, which often is enough right there. Everyone here could go out and buy a big set of speakers, turn them up to 11 and be a jerk, but that isn't a widespread problem because most people aren't jerks and even for those that are most will bow to social pressure. For what remains, just call the cops. "It's freaking one in the morning and so-and-so's kid is having a rock concert in their back yard" becomes "so-and-so's kid is operating a jammer and messing with everyone's Internet".

No doubt there will be plenty of growing pains though, and people being idiots. Wasn't too long ago where we had a story covering people pointing lasers at aircraft for example.

Well said. Hit the nail on the head.

If all else fails, one can always go with the HARM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM

On par with showing up at a loud party with a chainsaw and taking on the speakers

I wholeheartedly approve of the "fix it with explosions" mindset. Carry on.

 

[Hollywood Baby]

The DOD has been doing this for awhile and haven't had much luck with it yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JTRS

 

[rakles]

So everything old is new again. Software defined radios have been around for awhile in ham radio and they do offer a lot of advantages. People who own them tend to like them. Interesting to see them on Ars as "revolutionary".

 

[Magnus Incognitus]

I've only got cursory knowledge or radio theory, but reading about this makes me interested in a deeper understanding of it all, especially if there is, given the prices mentioned, potential for hobbyist hacking in the future.

 

[0xgone]

I could not agree more about the potential of SDR. Unfortunately right now it's still underground technology except for the military and multinationals.