Lab Outline

Week 1: RF Spectrum Visualization

• Install the USB SDR on your laptop

• Use GQRX or SDR# SDR programs to visualize different communications bands

• Identify several different types of signals

Week 2: Modulation, Decimation, Filtering, and Spectrograms

• Capture signals, and load them into matlab

• Compute spectrograms to visualize the signals

• Extract specific signals by modulation, filtering, and decimation

Week 3: AM Modulation

• AM Modulation is used for air traffic control radio

• Capture airband signals, and play them back in matlab

• SSB AM receiver

Week 4: Narrow Band FM

• Narrowband FM is widely used for police and fire radios, and also amateur radio

• Capture police radio signals

• Demodulate the FM signals, and play them back

• Build your own police scanner

Week 5-6: Broadcast FM

• The broadcast FM signal contains a stereo audio signal, plus many other signals

• Week 5 we will demodulate the mono FM signal

• Week 6 we will build a stereo receiver

• We will also look at the digital HD radio signals, and the RDS data signal

Week 7-9: Digital Communications

• Find digital signals in the RF spectrum, identify the modulation schemes

• Capture APRS digital packet radio signals, and decode them. APRS is a simple amateur radio packet network (think Twitter for amateur radio).

• Capture and decode ATS-B signals, the air traffic control radio packets that airplanes use to broadcast their ID, location, and speed.