Open Research Institute Presentations, 11 Feb 2021

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From YouTube: HamCation2021 TAPR ORI Intro

Description

This is the TAPR/ORI intro for HamCation 2021.

Attendees heard about fun and exciting developments for amateur radio in space and space science from two non-profit organizations that work together to advance the radio arts.

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Exciting developments are happening in terrestrial microwave aerospace, machine learning, contesting education and much more. There has never been a better time to be involved in amateur radio. You belong no matter your level of technical expertise.

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Amateur radio brings together people from around the world being able to communicate on equipment that you may have built yourself with someone in a faraway country without relying on anything other than the ionosphere, and some wire is a familiar story and a cherished tradition now with fourth and fifth generation: amateur operators in the united states. How are they getting on the air today?

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How did their radio experiments start? A common entry point is an inexpensive, software-defined radio receiver called the rtl sdr in the past. We might have built a crystal radio set and listened to stations after dark. Now, a ham interested in software-defined radio can download open source computer programs that transform inexpensive thumb, drive sized circuits into dozens of different radios that do everything from receive satellite signals to monitor local fm repeaters.

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In the past, you might have built your radio out of a parts kit. Now you are just as likely to have programmed your first radio with an open source dsp toolkit such as gnu radio. So once you have something like the rtl sdr, where do you go from there open source software and hardware, and software defined radios are at the heart of what open research institute, ori and tucson amateur packet, radio tapper? Do software defined radios, replace some or all of fixed hardware with software programming?

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This means that your radio can be a much more flexible device than traditional, fixed circuit rigs. This flexibility usually comes at a cost of additional power, consumption and complexity.

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Once you're able to reconfigure a radio on the fly, the next step is to sense the environment and automatically adapt to the environment to achieve the best possible communications for the amateur operator, both the tangerine sdr from tapper and the phase 4 radios from ori envision and incorporate some type of autonomous operation that makes the most of our spectrum.

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The phase 4 microwave system automatically adapts the structure of the transmissions based on signal-to-noise ratio. When things are hard to hear, there is more error, correction and simpler modulation schemes are used when the signals are strong. Less error, correction and more complex modulation are used. This means maximum data through the radio. At any time, the tangerine sdr is fully capable of this type of operation called adaptive coding and modulation and more the tangerine sdr can be used to learn and predict ionospheric conditions which directly contributes to our scientific understanding.

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Ori and tapper are advancing the radio arts with fun and easy to use designs that put the operator first. In both cases, the radios can be accessed remotely ori's user interface is a web app, which means there are no software downloads just to use the radio and the visual style can be modified.

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If you need large, fonts or high contrast, then it's there, tangerine sdr can be used the same way. The tangerine sdr allows you to monitor an enormous amount of bandwidth and easily find what you're looking for the tangerine sdr can receive and decode multiple simultaneous data streams. So it can listen on all bands at once for specific call signs when one of these call signs is decoded, the software can send a notification email to you indicating where to find your buddy.

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How cool is that one of the biggest challenges to enjoying software-defined radios is the learning curve? Advanced digital communications techniques can be complex, cutting-edge techniques rely on advanced math, and this is where both topper and ori can help by making these powerful and modern radios fun and easy to use some of the barriers to learning are removed by using open source designs and by explaining the various parts of the computer code. Even the most difficult math in the forward, error, correction and filtering can be seen, understood and appreciated.

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Ori and tapper are technical organizations that welcome volunteers at all levels. If you want to help advance open source, amateur radio designs and shape the features and functions of software-defined radios, please visit our websites to get started. Ori does research and development for open source, amateur radio, with an emphasis on the amateur radio satellite service. Tapper does innovative open source hardware designs with an emphasis on terrestrial and hf radios. Both organizations are registered non-profits in the united states and work together.

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Tapper sells memberships, publishes a newsletter and has an annual technical conference and publishes a technical proceedings. Ori sponsors, technical and regulatory work, including phase four ground. The m17 project, p4dx ambisat, sensors and more you'll, hear more about ori in the second half of the forum today and now to talk about tapper and tangerine sdr. Here's.

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