New This Year - HAM radio and Software Defined Radio Labs and Project



It was discovered by Eric Fry that DVB-T dongles based on the Realtek RTL2832U can be used as cheap Software Defined Radios (SDR). Basically the chip allows the transfer of raw samples to a host computer. The samples can then be used to digitally demodulate and process almost anything that is transmitted between 27-1700Mhz!

Several homeworks/Labs will use the SDR. Each student in the class will receive a dongle and will be able to experiment with its capabilities. The final project will also be based on SDR. Several possibilities are writing an FM receiver, digital radio receiver, Police scanner, GPS receiver, NOAA weather alert receiver or satelite imagery and more.

In addition, each student will get a Baofeng UV-5r hand held radio. This will be used in Labs and the final project in the class. Every student in the class will take a HAM radio licensing exam, and be licensed by the FCC to operate the radios.