GNU Radio

Infobox Software
name = GNU Radio



caption =
author = GNU project
developer = Eric Blossom
released =
latest release version = 3.1.3
latest release date = August 23, 2008
operating system = Cross-platform
genre = Radio
license = GNU General Public License
website = [http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki]

GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for learning about, building, and deploying software-defined radio systems. Started in 1998, GNU Radio is now an official GNU project. Philanthropist John Gilmore initiated and has sustained GNU Radio with the funding of $320,000 (US) to Eric Blossom for code creation and project management duties.

GNU Radio is a signal processing package, which is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The goal is to give ordinary software people the ability to 'hack' the electromagnetic spectrum, that is, to understand the radio spectrum and think of clever ways to use it.

As with all software-defined radio systems, reconfigurability is the key feature. Instead of purchasing multiple expensive radios, a single more generic radio is purchased, which feeds into powerful signal processing software (GNU Radio, in this case). Currently only a few forms of radio are duplicated in GNU Radio, but if one understands the math of a radio transmission system, one can reconfigure GNU Radio to receive it.

GNU Radio began as a fork of the Pspectra code that was developed by the SpectrumWare project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 a complete rewrite of the GNU Radio was completed, so today GNU Radio doesn't contain any of the original Pspectra code. Also of note is that the Pspectra codebase has been used as the foundation of the commercial Vanu Software Radio.

The GNU Radio project created the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP, [http://www.ettus.com/downloads/usrp_v4.pdf] ) which is a digital acquisition (DAQ) system containing four 64 mega sample-per-second (MS/s) 12-bit analog-to-digital (A to D) converters, four 128 MS/s 14-bit digital-to-analog (D to A) converters, and support circuitry including a high-speed USB 2.0 interface. The USRP is capable of processing signals up to 16 MHz wide. Several transmitter and receiver plug-in daughter boards are available covering various bands between 0 and 2.9 GHz [http://www.ettus.com/custom.html] . The USRP was developed by Matt Ettus.

Version history

This is the version history, latest first:

External links

* [http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki GNU Radio project home page]
* [http://www.tools4sdr.com/DispPubli.php?Id=1586610 Tools4SDR] Tools for GNU Radio
* http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring-gnuradio.html
* http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spectrum/
* http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/12/18/gnu_radio/
* http://comsec.com/software-radio.html
* http://www.ettus.com/
* [http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70933-0.html GNU Radio Opens an Unseen World] (Wired News)
* [http://www.kd7lmo.net/ground_gnuradio.html kd7lmo GNU Radio]
* [http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct06/4654 Hardware for Your Software Radio] (IEEE Spectrum)
* [http://folk.ntnu.no/undheim/sdr/ Digital Signal Processing using the GNU Radio toolkit]
* [http://nms.csail.mit.edu/SpectrumWare/ SpectrumWare project]