Group Kickstarting a High-Bandwidth Software Defined Radio (SDR) Peripheral

TwineLogic writes "Many Slashdot readers have been enjoying the availability of $20 USB radios which can tune in the range of 50MHz-2GHz. These devices, while cheap, have limited bandwidth (about 2MHz) and minimal resolution (8-bit). Nuand, a new start-up from Santa Clara, wants to improve on that. Their Kickstarter proposal for bladeRF, a Software Defined Radio transceiver, will support 20MHz bandwidth and 12-bit samples. The frequency range to be covered is planned as 300MHz-3.6Ghz. In addition to the extended spectrum coverage, higher bandwidth, and increased resolution, the bladeRF will have an on-board FPGA capable of performing signal processing and an Altera processor as well. SDR hobbyists have been using the inexpensive receivers to decode airplane data transmission giving locations and mechanical condition, GPS signals, and many other digital signals traveling through the air around us. This new device would extend the range of inexpensive SDRs beyond the spectrum of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. In addition, the peripheral includes a low-power transmitter which the experimenter can use without needing a 'Ham' license."

Expansion Boards Interfaces

[Nuand]

Hey guys, I'm John (the guy from the video). We are very excited to have made it here on Slashdot! We just wanted to post up a comment that we also left on the Kickstarter page addressing the concerns of those interested in frequencies under 300mhz. The usable frequency range of the bladeRF does indeed start at 300MHz but goes up to 3.8GHz. Having one (or even two) front-ends spanning this many octaves is a challenge, however the bladeRF performs exceptionally well over the entire range. That however may not have been the case had we included the circuitry needed to reach those lower frequencies. As a solution, we added an expansion board interface to the bladeRF. One of our first expansion boards will be a block up/down converter. We wanted to wait a little bit to get some feedback from people to see what frequency ranges people were interested in seeing. As of now it seems very likely that we will look at going from as close to DC as possible up to a minimum of 11GHz. So as soon as we do our engineering homework and see what's possible we will make an official announcement about this on the Kickstarter page.

Re:300 mhz and up?

[fyngyrz]

LOL. What is the use of that for a non-Ham?

LOL. Well, let's see. International shortwave broadcasts, both analog and digital. You know, news about other than the Kardashians. AM radio broadcasts (US and elsewhere, depending on your antenna systems.) Longwave broadcasts. Aero beacons. Military and utility monitoring. Solar flare monitoring. Monitoring ultrasonics, such as bats and insects. Submarine communications. Time stations. Citizens band. R/c device monitoring. Coast guard. Commercial marine communications. Weather reports (teletype, naxtex, FAX WX maps, greyscale satellite images.) All kinds of analysis of all of these. And yes, all kinds of ham radio monitoring too... you don't have to be a ham to listen and/or decode. There are eleven ham bands in the range 0-30 Mhz.

Just a brief overview, of course. HF is where the fun is, I assure you. I can monitor from almost DC to several GHz here, and HF is definitely where it's at as far as I'm concerned.