By

This morning, I got an e-mail from a reader who asked, “I would like you to help me understand software-defined radio (SDR) and applications for hams.”

Now, I’m in no way, shape, or form an expert on SDR. I know what SDR is—or at least I think I do—but how to explain it to a newcomer? So, the first thing I did, of course, was to do a Google search. Searching for “software defined radio for amateur radio operators” yielded 181,000 results.

The best one that I found is Software Defined Radio for Amateur Radio — An Overview. This is a slide show from a presentation give by Steve Dick, K1RF, on February 11, 2015. The first few slides give a good overview of what we mean when we say a radio is “software-defined.” Then, the presentation digs into some of the technical aspects of SDR.

The ARRL website has a page on SDR, but unfortunately, most of the links are to articles published from 1998 to 2002. this page should really be updated. It does include a few good links, though, including one to the BORES Signal Processing DSP course – Introduction to DSP.

Other good resources that I found include:

An Introduction to HF Software-Defined Radio, by Andrew Barron, ZL3DW. This is a book on the topic in PDF form. Actually, I’m not really sure if this is a legal copy, as a print version is available on Amazon for $20.

New to SDR?

RTL-SDR.COM. This site is all about using DVB-T TV tuner dongles based on the RTL2832U chipset as software-defined radios. These dongles are very inexpensive and a cheap way to get into SDR.

If a beginner asked you this question, how would you respond? What are some resources that you have found useful?