BinaryRF has posted a detailed tutorial on using the HackRF SDR to decode POCSAG pager traffic. He starts with the HackRF hardware connected to his Ubuntu Linux box. The basic procedure involves using gqrx, then pipingthe audio output to multimon decoding software using the pavucontrol program.
Category Archives: digital radio data
RDS reception using RTL-SDR dongle
If you have a RTL-SDR dongle and Windows machine you might want to try out this simple project. It’s a proof of concept using an Ubuntu machine with GNU Radio Companion to obtain the RDS signal from the FM broadcast. Then the data is sent over TCP to a Windows 7 machine, running a .NET […]
DIY RF Transceiver using MRF49XA and AT90USB162
William Dillon has posted his initial work on a prototype USB RF data packet Transceiver dongle using the MRF49XA and an Atmel AT90USB162 micro controller. He embarked on a journey exploring the development of packet formats and protocols, as well as types of error correction. This open source project’s details, code links, schematic and photos […]
Reverse engineering a wireless burglar alarm
Cybergibbon has been working on reversing the digital protocol used by a wireless alarm system he recently acquired. He began by observing the alarm sensor’s signal using first an RF Explorer, then using RTL-SDR and SDR# to record the signal, which he analyzed with Audacity. Next, he cracked open the sensor itself to investigate the […]
RTL-SDR dsd tutorial: monitoring P25 digital voice
The crew over at RTL-SDR.com has posted a simple tutorial on using the RTL-SDR dongle and free SDR# and Digital Speech Decoder software (dsd) to monitor P25 digital radio voice comms. They describe, “Digital radio voice communications are becoming more commonly used in the radio spectrum. This is due to the various improvements offered over […]
Tutorial: receiving ACARS with RTL-SDR
This posting on RTL-SDR.com provides a good explanation of how to receive and decode the aeronautical digital communications known as Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) generally found on 131.55 MHz. Their technique uses the RTL-SDR dongle tuned by SDR# which feeds into the decoding program. The tutorial also contains links to several videos […]
VHF FM Aircraft receiver
VHF FM Aircraft receiver: VHF FM Aircraft Receiver is a superregenative receiver developed for listening to FM transmitters but also tunes the aircraft band and the top portion of the FM broadcast band. Receives both AM and FM (107mHz to 135 MHz). You can use this receiver with the any FM transmitter. The receiver is […]
Obscure mil doc: Telemetry Systems Radio Frequency Handbook
If you’re interested in obscure RF topics here’s a document for you. The Telemetry Systems Radio Frequency Handbook is a 133 page manual in PDF released by the US Army and found on the White Sands Missile Range website. It was prepared to assist in the development of improved RF telemetry transmitting and receiving systems […]
APRS and GPS networking, operations and theory by Steve Bowen
Todd Harrison, member of the Superstition Amateur Radio Club (SARC), posted this video by Steve Bowen: APRS and GPS networking, operations and theory This presentation does not cover how to setup and use Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) but does get into its origins, limits, functionality and usage.
RTL-SDR monitors ADS-B with ADSB# and adsbScope
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is a radio communications system used by aircraft worldwide to transmit position and identification information. It uses a frequency of 1090 MHz, sending data using a modulation scheme called Pulse Position Modulation (PPM). To monitor this system you could purchase a dedicated ADS-B receiver for several hundred dollars, or design your […]
FreeDV open source digital radio protocol
Interested in new open source digital radio protocols? Check out FreeDV. FreeDV is a GUI application for Windows and Linux (MacOS and BSD are in testing) that allows any SSB radio to be used for low bit rate digital voice. Speech is compressed down to 1400 bit/s then modulated onto a 1100 Hz wide QPSK […]
DEFCON 20: RenderMan on ADS-B aero radio
Brad Haines (RenderMan) CISSP, is a Whitehat by trade, Blackhat by fashion, who presented this talk at DEFCON 20. For those of you unfamiliar with him, RenderMan has a history of hacking RF who’s rumored to be a member of the Church of WiFi. In this presentation he turns his attention to ADS-B (Automatic Dependent […]
DEFCON 20: SIGINT and traffic analysis for the rest of us
At last Summer’s DEFCON 20 conference Sandy Clark and Matt Blaze from the University of Pennsylvania discussed their research into the security of the P25 (APCO Project 25) digital radio protocol. Here they explain the basics of the P25 protocol and examine some of the problems and flaws they uncovered in its security. They highlight […]
Closer look at a direct sequence spread spectrum signal
Sebastian Westerhold draws our attention to his article taking a closer look at a direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) signal. Sebastian is holder of amateur radio license KF5OBS and is interested in experimenting with pseudorandom number generators. In his article he describes the generation of a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) using a linear feedback shift […]
Video: PhreakNIC 16 – Wardriving the 4.9GHz public safety bands
What is the 4.9 GHz public safety band? In the US RF hackers may be familiar with the old VHF and UHF FM voice police/fire/ems radio bands. Few are aware that in the post-9/11 environment other public safety data and digital voice ops are moving to previously unused portions of the spectrum. In this video […]
RadioBlock adds RF comms to your embedded project
Here’s an interesting project we found on Kickstarter. Known as RadioBlock, this device promises to provide a simple “radio building block” for your embedded projects. The blocks have a four pin connector, two for 3-6 Vdd and ground, and two for TTL serial comms. The RF link consists of an IEEE802.15.4 Atmel RF231 module and […]
DeepSec 2011: intelligent Bluetooth fuzzing – why bother?
Security researchers Tommi Mäkilä and Jukka Taimisto of Codenomicon gave this presentation at the DeepSec 2011 conference discussing ways to sensibly test Bluetooth stacks. Their talk presents the number of ways in which Bluetooth attacks have been attempted with varying degrees of success. They also present a discussion on fuzzing techniques and creating intelligent fuzzers […]
CODEC 2 Open source speech coding at 2400 bit/s and below
What’s CODEC 2? In this video from the 2011 Digital Communications Conference held last September in Baltimore, MD, David Rowe, Australian Amateur Radio operator VK5DGR, detailed his work on an open-source, low bit-rate CODEC for Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. It’s presently in the Alpha testing stage. More information on this codec as well as […]
ADS-B sync and Manchester decoding in CPLD
P. Kusmierski posted an article on flipthatbit describing ADS-B sync and Manchester decoding in CPLD. The CPLD used is a Xilinx XC9536XL (which is the smaller version of the XC9572XL found in our CPLD Development Board.) Having put together my miniADSB I needed to extract the actual data from the Manchester encoded bit streams it […]
Decoding P25 with SDR#, DSD, and RTLSDR
This is another illustration of the amazing utility of the RTL-SDR and SDR# software. Here proct0r links the output from SDR# to a program known as DSD. DSD is an open source command line program originally coded in C by anonymous for Linux for the purpose of decoding digital protocols via a PC soundcard.