Wireless and SDR Archives

May 17, 2023 DSP / Wireless and SDR

Top 5 Software Defined Radios (SDR) for RF Experimentation

In this article, I describe 5 of the most popular SDRs available for RF experimentation today. As a 6th member of this list, I include a surprisingly common and free SDR that can be used for your fun radio projects. Table of Contents Background Where We Came From Top SDRs 5. Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) 4. LimeSDR 3. HackRF One 2. ADALM-Pluto 1. RTL-SDR 0. A Free SDR We start with a little bit of background and where we came from. Background Software Defined Radio (SDR) has revolutionized wireless communication in the same way Microsoft revolutionized the scope of

March 23, 2025 DSP / Wireless and SDR

Two Birds with One Tone: I/Q Signals and Fourier Transform – Part 1

This article is a deep and highly intuitive breakdown of the fundamental concept behind I/Q signals. If you want to see how these concepts function inside actual communication receivers and hardware, you can see read about I/Q signals from a communication systems perspective. When a new member arrives at the Signal Processing Club, this is what they find at the club gate: I/Q signals. Perhaps a secret plot to keep most people out of the party? Some return from here to try another area (e.g., machine learning, which pays more and is easier to understand but less interesting than signal

Spectrum of the cascade of CIC filters with a wideband compensation filter for rate change factor 10, unit differential delay and 4 stages

November 24, 2022 DSP / Wireless and SDR

Cascaded Integrator Comb (CIC) Filters – A Staircase of DSP

In olden days, people used to have lots of kids. A famous Urdu satirist once wrote: "It has been observed that the last kid is usually the most mischievous of them all. Therefore, there should be no last kid in a family!" I remembered this line today because I have observed that starting a write-up is the most difficult task of them all. Therefore, there is no introductory paragraph in this article. Suffice it to say that this is the only topic I have found that takes you from a very small first step (just two additions) to really advanced

May 28, 2025 DSP / Wireless and SDR

Two Birds with One Tone: I/Q Signals and Fourier Transform – Part 2

In Part 1 on I/Q fundamentals series, we saw the implications of orthogonality in amplitude and phase shift. This led to our treatment of signals as two dimensional complex numbers in time I/Q plane. Now we talk about orthogonality in frequency, how it gives rise to a different I/Q plane and see its implications in signal processing applications. Let us start with a new perspective that will lift more veils from the I/Q puzzle. A Basic Building Block Humans use the power of logic to uncover the rules according to which the world works. But our minds struggle to retain

Eye diagram of CQPSK demodulation with a P25 C4FM receiver

June 3, 2026 Wireless and SDR

Demodulating P25 CQPSK Signals Using a C4FM Receiver

Usually a modulation of one species can only be demodulated with the radio signal processing chain of the same species. But P25 has a very interesting and unusual concept of demodulating a signal from one modulation species using the receiver of another species. APCO Project 25, commonly known as P25, is a suite of digital radio standards designed for public safety and first responder communications across North America which is similar to European Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA). The main purpose of its development was to ensure seamless interoperability among federal, state and local agencies. Hence, it enables radios from different