Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Open Research Institute ITAR/EAR policy work – 2019 Update

Open Research Institute has a significant update to our ongoing amateur radio satellite communications policy work. This letter describes the work and includes a request for assistance.

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) are two United States export control laws that affect the manufacturing, sales and distribution of technology.

Open Research Institute (ORI) operates using the public domain carve-outs in ITAR and EAR.

Our current policy is documented on our website. Here’s the direct links:
https://openresearch.institute/itar-and-ear-strategy/ and https://openresearch.institute/developer-and-participant-policies/

We believe these policies are sufficient.

However,

1) Some potential funding sources want to see a formal legal opinion.

2) Some organizations have made allegations that everything we do is illegal (and unethical, fattening, stupid, etc.).

Our choices were to continue insisting we are right, or to be effective.

I chose to be effective.

Therefore, in July 2019 Bruce Perens went out and found several law firms that were aligned with our goals and values. We selected one recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and began work.

After the first round of conversation in August 2019, we had decided to 1) pay for a formal legal opinion and 2) apply for EAR certification with the US Department of Commerce. This would certify that the open source work we were doing was A-ok with the US government.

There was a delay in beginning this work. I stepped up to lead the effort and initiated another round of conversation with the law firm.

This second round of conversation refined the goal.

My highest priority is ensuring risk reduction to our amazing volunteers. The open source and public domain carve outs deliver enormous risk reduction and offer wonderful international opportunities for meaningful collaboration. But, just like with proprietary ITAR/EAR work, you have to know what you’re doing in order to unlock all the benefits.

A formal legal opinion was still desired and will be obtained. That has not changed. But, instead of going for EAR Certification, which we considered to be an easier application process, we decided we would go for the top tier, and apply for ITAR Commodity Jurisdiction from the US Department of State.

If successful, then this finding solves EAR certification and also better defines a relationship with the Department of Defense, which is the third major entity involved in regulating the amateur radio satellite work we are doing. A Commodity Jurisdiction is widely considered to be the gold standard for work related to ITAR.

ORI is asking that our programs of work be found explicitly *not* subject to ITAR.

This application is appropriately lengthy and complex. This effort is not without risk. Instead of just continuing to happily do what we’ve been doing, which we believe to be entirely legal and above-board, we are instead deliberately attracting attention, scrutiny, and judgement.

Why do this? Because others have not. The trinity of fear-uncertainty-doubt must be confronted and defeated. Open source is the way forward for amateur radio satellite work.

The cover letter from the law firm has been delivered to us. This cover letter contains the draft of the source material for the application. We also have a copy of ITAR Category XV (Spacecraft and Related Articles), DDTC CJ Determinations list (to study the list of successful applications) and a copy of the Commerce Control List.

We will review and if necessary revise the cover letter, until it accurately and completely represents our work. Then we will prepare our application and then we will file it.

Let’s talk about expenses. In August, we estimated the effort would cost $50,000. Current estimates, to get us up to the point of being able to apply, are much less than that at $5,000. I can pay for this.

ORI currently has $13,041 in the bank. These funds are intended for hardware development and boards, and not for legal. If the expenses end up exceeding my ability to pay, then I will ask for help. ORI hardware funds will not be diverted to cover legal costs.

What do we need?

There is a section in the application where supporting organizations can contribute supportive comments.

I ask all AMSAT organizations to seriously consider providing a statement of strong support for Open Research Institute’s Commodity Jurisdiction request. Describing the work that would be enabled by safe, sane, and legal legal open source collaboration would be of great benefit to this application.

I humbly ask ARRL, ARISS, Libre Space Foundation, and any other group that has an interest in this work to consider formally supporting this effort with a statement that can be included with the request.

Our law firm can provide some guidance on statements if necessary. We deeply appreciate any assistance provided.

Thank you all for the support, encouragement, comment, critique, questions, and motivation.

-Michelle Thompson W5NYV
w5nyv@arrl.net 858 229 3399

Posted on

Open Research Institute – Phase 4 Space Rent-a-GEO

Here is our grant proposal for Rent-a-GEO. The intended audience for this proposal is ARDC, ARRL, and FEMA.

Rent-a-GEO-Phase-4-Space

This project provides a way for amateur radio operators to communicate through a geosynchronous satellite over the continental US, parts of Canada, and parts of Mexico.

There are two main purposes served by this communications project. First is enhanced emergency communications support from amateur radio. Second is research and development of open source hardware that implements advanced digital communications functions.

Functions include field-configurable polyphase filterbank channelizers, queueing and multiplexing functions, digital signal processing, open source implementations of current communications protocols, and geosynchronous satellite communications best practices.

Posted on

Open Research Institute – Phase 4 Space – Grant Application – Overview

Here is the overview document submitted to ARDC, at their invitation, on 22 August 2019 for the Open Research Institute Phase 4 Space project.

This project unites the global amateur radio community with an advanced microwave digital satellite system. Four geosynchronous amateur radio payloads, and four flight spares, are the product of the work that would be funded by this grant. All work is open source and open access and in full compliance with all developer and participant policies. Satellites to be placed 90 degrees apart for global coverage. All amateur satellite and amateur radio organizations will be invited to fully participate.

Detailed documentation of the communications payload development process is under review and will be published as soon as the review process is complete.

Open_Research_Institute_Phase_4_Space

Posted on

FPGA iCEBreaker Workshop – digital communications for amateur satellites

Greetings all!

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are one of three fundamental types of digital architectures used for communications R&D.

The others are general purpose processors and graphical processing units (GPUs).

This fall, in San Diego, California, there will be an FPGA course sponsored by Open Research Institute. There are 10 spots with amateur communications as the focus of the work.

FPGAs are a primary technology in satellite communications. They’re used in R&D and in deployment. It is difficult to get started with FPGA design for several reasons. The tools have traditionally been proprietary. The companies that make the tools price them for large corporations to buy. Coursework for FPGA design is rare.

This is where iCEBreaker makes a difference.

An iCEBreaker Workshop 10 pack has been made available. They are described at this link https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga

I will use this hardware to put on a course for anyone interested in amateur radio satellite and terrestrial development. All course materials will be published.

The first course will be in San Diego. If you’re in the area, please get in touch! MakerPlace and CoLab are the likely sites.

Later workshops could be at places like Symposium, Xenia, or Hamcation. The full course cannot be accomplished in a day, but a workshop could get the basics across and provide a substantial boost to motivated amateur satellite engineering volunteers. Let me know what you think.

more soon!
-Michelle W5NYV

Posted on

Video Report – Trans-Ionospheric Badge Update

https://youtu.be/TgJ7m0OETMw

Badge report! Brag Tape, Radio Peripheral update, and our ESP32 development board. It’s from hacker boxes and has a TFT display, programmable RGB LEDs, an SD card for storage, up down left right select user interface input, and some circuitry for charging a lithium ion battery. It’s a good platform for building up the executive function code for Phase 4 Ground radios.

What do we have working?

A high resolution display, SD card access, and bluetooth advertising that sends commands to the trans ionospheric badge.

ESP32 development can be done with the Arduino IDE, but this is very limited and hogs memory. For Phase 4 Ground we use the ESP IDF. This means command line, but Visual Studio Code works with some setup. This gives you context colors and build and run functions.

We highly recommend the ESP32 check it out at the links below. Our next report will be about multicast IP SDR work. See you then!

ESP32 info!

Overview:
https://www.espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview

Programming Guide:
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/

Trans-Ionospheric is a successful fundraiser for our open source amateur radio satellite communications work.

Thank you so much for the support! Buy one here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/123328684692

Posted on

$2,449.44 Donated to Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

Palomar Amateur Radio Club and Open Research Institute Donate $2,449.44 to Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

Palomar Amateur Radio Club (PARC) was founded in February of 1936 and serves the San Diego, CA, USA amateur radio community. PARC hosts monthly membership meetings and hosts several annual events. PARC repeater system serves individuals and groups and provides opportunities for recreation, emergency preparation, and technical experimentation.

http://palomararc.org/

Contact board@palomararc.org

Open Research Institute (ORI) is a non-profit research and development organization which provides all of its work to the general public under the principles of Open Source and Open Access to Research.

https://openresearch.institute/

Contact Michelle Thompson w5nyv@arrl.net

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) lets students worldwide experience the excitement of talking directly with crew members of the International Space Station, inspiring them to pursue interests in careers in science, technology, engineering and math, and engaging them with radio science technology through amateur radio.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or public forms. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio.

For more information, see www.ariss.org.

This donation is given to support the Multi-Voltage Power Supply (MVPS). ARISS needs to replace the current aging ISS amateur radio station power supply. ARISS has a fund-raising campaign throughout 2019 to help with the expensive space-rated parts required to finish building the MVPS units.

Kerry Banke N6IZW has been a core volunteer in the effort to design, build, and test the flight, training, and spare models of the MVPS. Inspired by his commitment, expertise, and mentoring throughout this project, individuals organized a fundraiser through the Amateur Radio Satellite Service Facebook group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/amateurradiosatelliteservice

Palomar Amateur Radio Club agreed to be the 501(c)(3) of record. Open Research Institute handled logistics, publicity, and secured a corporate match from Qualcomm Incorporated.

The $2,449.44 donation was made to ARISS from PARC on 28 May 2019. 

A substantial amount of additional funding is needed to replace the amateur radio power supplies on the ISS. This donation is a small part of a much larger effort to keep amateur radio in space, upgrade and update equipment on the space station, and promote peaceful international cooperation and the unparalleled educational opportunities enabled by ARISS.

Posted on

March 2019 Report: JAMSAT Symposium, Phase 4 Ground, and GNU Radio Companion Localization!

Phase 4 Ground and GNU Radio

My daughter Geneva and I had a wonderful time at JAMSAT Symposium in March 2019! There was a wide variety of talks about so many different payloads, a very special banquet dinner, adventures in Kyoto and Osaka, visits to ham radio stores, getting to see a new ICOM radio up close, lots of Pokemon, a Fire Festival, and making so many new friends. We were welcomed and will never forget the hospitality. A big part of Symposium was the GNU Radio Workshop by Imamura-san. It was an honor to share how we on Phase 4 Ground use GNU Radio in our presentation on Sunday morning.

GNU Radio is a digital signal processing framework for software-defined radio. It’s the software that tells the hardware in your radio what to do. We need to be able to quickly and easily set up a software-defined radio to do whatever modulation and coding we want, and GNU Radio Companion can help us do this. GNU Radio Companion is a Graphical User Interface that allows us to drag and drop functions onto a canvas. We click block outputs to connect to block inputs. When we do this, it creates a directed graph that implements radio functions. The signals flow from beginning to end. Each block modifies the signal, as if it was part of a circuit. The flow graph looks something like a block diagram combined with a software flowchart. GNU Radio has software variables. It can adapt to signal conditions and user input.

The workshop was held after the last talk on Sunday. It was several hours of hands-on training. Participants brought their own computers, installed GNU Radio, and created useful radio flow graphs that worked with real hardware. Several experiments were done in order. Imamura-san kept everything organized through a set of projected slides that had clear instructions. Optimizations and customizations were made so that participants could see how they can use GNU Radio to achieve their goals. The hardware included RTL-SDRs and Plutos. Imamura-san also demonstrated a live video transmission from the podium.

GNU Radio comes with a very large number blocks included. When you install GNU Radio, these blocks come for free! The first type of block is a source block. This brings the digital samples, from the radio hardware attached to the computer, into the GNU Radio flow graph. The second type of block is a sink block, which consumes signals. Sink blocks include things like saving a signal to disk, an audio output, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, time sequences, or video. In between the sources and the sinks are all the radio functions that we need to make our radios work. Filters, amplifiers, decoders, demodulators, counters, constellations, costas loops, synchronizers, and more! You can make your own custom blocks or modify an existing block.

If you install GNU Radio using PYBOMBs, then you can add additional blocks from outside GNU Radio very easily. PYBOMBS works on Linux.

One of the most useful GNU Radio Recipes for our community is gr-satellites, by Dr. Daniel Estévez. There are a lot of satellites supported in this module. For an introduction, please see the source code repository here: https://github.com/daniestevez/gr-satellites.

The introduction also covers how to submit telemetry to the projects that have requested this.

Other great open source satellite communications projects include Dan Cajacob’s base station network, Alexandru Csete’s gqrx and gpredict programs, Libre Space Foundation’s SatNOGs (satellite network on the ground) with RTL-SDR and GNU Radio, and PE4WJ Es’Hail2 (QO-100) uplink, beacon tracker and LNB drift correction flowgraphs.

Phase 4 Ground is a broadband digital microwave system for both terrestrial and space use. It complies with both ITAR and EAR open source and public domain carve-outs, so it’s open to participation worldwide. All engineering is published as it’s created. All are welcome to participate.

Phase 4 Ground is best suited for GEO and HEO satellite missions. The uplink is frequency division multiple access. We use a 5GHz uplink. The regenerative repeater payload receives the uplink signals, digitizes them, multiplexes them, and processes them into DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X frames. The downlink is 10GHz. DVB-S2 is Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite 2nd edition. The X stands for extensions down in to Very Low SNR modulation and codings. Very Low SNR is of interest to hams, so we include the extension to the main standard DVB-S2.

We use both pilots and short frame lengths in order to make the receiver implementation as easy as possible. Pilot tones are optional, and there are medium and long frames available in the standard.

There is a recommended order to receive DVB-S2/X frames. The first stage of the demodulator is symbol timing recovery. We have to figure out the best possible time to measure the received signal. We don?t know what the transmitter clock is doing! We will not be coordinated with it. We may even be off a bit in terms of the period of the clocks, or we might have jitter, or we might have drift. We have to analyze the received waveform and synchronize our receiver clock to the transmitter clock that is ?hidden? in the received signal. Then, once we are synchronized, we sample that symbol and report the results. Doing this gives us a reliable value for the received symbol. Now that we have a series of received symbols, we have to figure out the start of the frame. This is done in DVB-S2 (and many other protocols) by sending a fixed well-known pattern at the start of every frame. For DVB-S2, this is called a Physical Layer Start of Frame sequence. It?s 26 symbols long. This is what we look for. Once we see it, we know where the start of the frame is! Frame synchronization can be done in several ways. There are two different methods described in the implementation guidelines for DVB-S2/X. One is relatively simple, using shift registers. The other is bit more complex, using state machines. There are advantages to using the state machine method, but it?s more complicated and expensive. The shift registers is simple and cheap, but gives up a bit of performance. This is the constant balance in digital communications. Performance comes at a cost!

Right after frame synchronization, we correct for carrier frequency error. First we do a coarse correction. This can be done with a delay-and-multiply frequency error detector. Then we do a fine correction. This can be done with something like a feed-forward estimation algorithm. Coarse correction is in the MHz, and fine correction is the hundreds of kHz.

Next, we do phase recovery. This is to fix any residual frequency offset from the coarse and fine frequency offsets. Phase 4 Ground will support all the modulation and codings of DVB-S2/X, but we expect lower order modulations to be more heavily used. This means that a pilot-assisted maximum-likelihood (ML) feed-forward estimator will be the most useful. If you compute the average phase of each pilot field, then you can subtract this out and improve the signal. Higher-order modulations will need another feedback loop.

Automatic gain control is next. AGC can be done in many ways. One way to do it depends on the pilot symbols in DVB-S2/X standard. These symbols are sent at regular intervals to provide a known easy-to-receive signal. We use these known pilot symbols in order to determine the amplitude multiplication factor for the rest of the signal. Pilot symbols are optional in the DVB standard, but Phase 4 Ground requires them. When the pilot symbols are on, the AGC is listening. When the pilot symbols are off, the AGC turns off, and the information from the AGC is used.

After AGC, the constellation is decoded. DVB-S2 has a lot of them! There are many techniques to get the bits from the constellations. GNU Radio has a very versatile and powerful constellation block.

Instead of the usual MPEG transport stream (DVB-S2 is for satellite TV, so the content is usually broadcast television signals), we use the more flexible Generic Stream Encapsulation standard from DVB.org. This means we have less overhead and complexity, and can handle any digital traffic that the amateur operator wants to transmit. It?s just a digital pipe.

Phase 4 Ground uses GNU Radio extensively in research and development as well as for archiving and publishing our work. GNU Radio is not just a tool to figure things out, but is also a way to define a reference design for the radio.

Because Phase 4 Ground is not a bent pipe, the payload is more complex. This complexity needs to be fully tested on the ground before risking large digital circuits in space.
All the uplink channels are received with a polyphase filter bank. The current polyphase filter bank implementation in GNU Radio needs some updates in order to achieve the speeds and performance that we want. This is an active area of research and development. There have been three efforts over the past three years by various groups that have attempted to update and improve the existing working polyphase filter bank in GNU Radio.

Ron Economos and Paul Williamson successfully implemented GSE in GNU Radio and in Wireshark. This made it possible to do transport layer testing. Ron Economos is the lead author of the DVB blocks in GNU Radio. Improvements to GSE continue today. The current focus is improving internetworking functions so that large amounts of data can be more easily handled. We intend to use multicast IP as much as possible, and making sure GSE integrates well with multicast IP is important.

The error correction in DVB-S2/X is state of the art. There are not many other error correcting codes that are better than Low Density Parity Check + BCH. This is a concatenated digital code specified by the DVB standard for S2 and T2 transmissions. We have two open source implementations of LDPC decode for DVB-S2/X. The first one is for graphical processing units and was written by Charles Brain. It was demonstrated at 2017 AMSAT-NA Symposium and at several events following. The second open source implementation is in C by Ahmet Inan and can be found here: https://github.com/xdsopl/LDPC

This version has been incorporated into GNU Radio by Ron Economos. This can be found here: https://github.com/drmpeg/gr-dvbs2rx

The next step for LDPC is to implement and publish an open source version for FPGA.

GNU Radio is very important for our voice codec work, uplink modulation experiments, and trying out authentication and authorization schemes. GNU Radio allows us to use a wide variety of off the shelf hardware to achieve things that were not possible only a few short years ago. The GNU Radio community has been welcoming, helpful, supportive, friendly, and a source of continually amazing software-defined radio advancements.

GNU Radio has an annual conference. In 2018, we held a week-long “Block Party” for DVB-S2/X. We had fun, set up multiple demos, explained DVB-S2/X, made the case for open source LDPC, and made progress on DVB-S2 correlates and GSE. Phase 4 Ground made significant progress due to the generous support of the conference organizers and the community.

Learn more about the conference here: https://www.gnuradio.org/grcon/grcon19/

Registration for 2019 is open. The conference will be held September 16-20, 2019 in Huntsville, AL, USA. There is a poster session, proceedings, talks, workshops, contests, and social activities. The theme for 2019 is Space Communications! There are special gifts for space themed content. If you have a GNU Radio project that you want to share, consider making a presentation at or sending a poster to GNU Radio Conference 2019.

One of the proposals coming out of JAMSAT 2019 was localization of GNU Radio Companion for the Japanese language. Work has begun. The first step is to make sure that all Japanese characters can be displayed in GNU Radio Companion. This means going through the codebase and removing anything that prevents Japanese characters from being freely displayed. GNU Radio project leadership is very supportive of the project. We will do our best on this! We will need help reviewing and perfecting the language support in GNU Radio Companion.

The collaboration between Phase 4 Ground and JAMSAT has been absolutely stellar and we all look forward to continued enjoyment and success. Next generation payloads will be more complicated with multiplexing and advanced digital techniques. We all need to be able to work together, internationally. Open source and public domain is the best way. Phase 4 Ground and Open Research Institute are entirely dedicated to making this happen. We will be keeping the momentum and progress going. ORI is proud to be an affiliate member of Open Source Initiative https://opensource.org/

Join the Phase 4 Ground team! Our mailing list can be found at our website https://openresearch.institute/ Write Michelle Thompson w5nyv@arrl.net to join our Slack account. This is where daily engineering discussions take place.

More soon!
-W5NYV

Posted on

GNU Radio Conference 2019 – Call for All! – Submit your presentations, posters, papers, and more

Dear friends and fans of GNU Radio,

GNU Radio Conference celebrates and showcases the substantial and remarkable progress of the world’s best open source digital signal processing framework for software-defined radios. In addition to presenting GNU Radio’s vibrant theoretical and practical presence in academia, industry, the military, and among amateurs and hobbyists, GNU Radio Conference 2019 will have a very special focus.

Summer 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first humans on the Moon. GNU Radio Conference selected Huntsville, AL, USA as the site for GNU Radio Conference 2019 in order to highlight and celebrate space exploration, astronomical research, and communication.

Space communications are challenging and mission critical. Research and development from space exploration has had and continues to have far-reaching effect on our communications gear and protocols.

Please join us September 16-20, 2019 at the “Huntsville Marriott at the Space & Rocket Center” hotel for the best technical conference of the year.

Registration and an online and mobile-friendly schedule will be posted at the conference web site:
https://www.gnuradio.org/grcon/grcon19/

Call for All!

We invite developers and users from the GNU Radio Community to present your projects, presentations, papers, posters, and problems at GNU Radio Conference 2019. Submit your talks, demos, and code! Please share this Call for All with anyone you think needs to read it.

To submit your content for the conference, visit our dedicated conference submission site at:
https://openconf.org/GRCon19/openconf.php

If you have questions or need assistance with OpenConf, or have content that doesn’t quite fit and you want to talk it over, please write grcon@gnuradio.org

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Space (including ground stations)*
  • Radio astronomy
  • Atmospheric research
  • Theoretical work
  • Practical applications
  • Aviation
  • Biomedical
  • Citizen Science
  • Digital Signal Processing
  • Education
  • Interface
  • Machine Learning
  • Security
  • Transportation
  • Wireless security
  • Amateur radio

*special focus awards given to all accepted work with Space as a topic.

Posted on

LimeSDR Mini Hardware Donations from ESA and MyriadRF Announced

Thank you to European Space Agency and MyriadRF for giving Open Research Institute the opportunity to get LimeSDR Minis into the hands of some very amazing people doing open source space communications research and development.

ORI and Phase 4 Ground are very proud to present the following international recipients. We commit to supporting, enabling, promoting, and publicizing their work.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sahana Raghunandan, USA

As part of discussions at the 2018 GNU Radio Conference DVB-S2X Block Party, one of the functionalities of the demodulator that was identified as needing additional review and testing was the frame synchronization and symbol timing recovery loop. The goal of targeting LimeSDR is to modify and test existing GNNU Radio flowgraphs related to this subsystem of the demodulator. In order test this functionality independently, it is assumed that signal captures at the input to the baseband demodulator will be available.

Sahana Raghunandan is a researcher at Virginia Tech and an independent consultant focusing on satellite and terrestrial systems engineering including waveform design & implementation and interference analysis for spectrum management. Her experience includes design and FPGA-based implementation of waveforms for satellite broadband modems and satellite ground systems architecture with emphasis on modeling and simulation of cross layer optimization techniques. She has also worked on platforms and architectures for software and cognitive radio networks. Her research experience also includes design of modules for radar data acquisition, system integration of radar depth sounders and application of synthetic aperture radar techniques for ice sheet tomography.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Jeremy Reeve, New Zealand

Jeremy has been working on VHF and L-band LNA designs. He has been running qucs simulations to look at optimum noise matching and stability circles and the like. His goals are to contribute RF hardware and baseband/FPGA content. He expects to be able to work with his educational institution to create a project that will result in quality open source publications.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Edson W. R. Pereira, Brazil

Edson is an open source advocate and extremely active in amateur radio. He implemented a GUI (SDR-Shell) for Bob McGwier’s and Frank Brickle’s DttSP SDR, has contributed code for Joe Taylor’s WSJT-X, and has been a primary contributor on many other projects.

He is a lead maintainer for the Phase 4 Ground polyphase filter bank repository and is heavily involved with Phil Karn KA9Q’s development effort for multicast IP SDR innovations and implementations.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Matias LU9CBL, Argentina

Matias is active in many areas of open source space communications. He is part of a groupworking to build a ground station design that supports a wide variety of satellite missions.

He has a SatNOGS ground station that is making rapid progress through the development portal. He is working to build and test antennas to add to this station.

He is active in his club station (LU4AA), which plans to run a station with an azimuth and elevation rotor from Yaesu, 2 crossed Yagis for VHF, and 2 crossed Yagis for UHF. Multiple fixed station will be added for remote control, and the station will be added to the SatNOGS network after it is functional.

Matias is active on SatNOGS forums and has a blog at lu9cbl.blogspot.com.
It is critically important to increase the number of stations and people involved in satellite communications from the southern hemisphere. Matias is deeply committed to publishing, sharing, and supporting others that are working in open source space communications.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

David Fannin, USA

David Fannin KK6DF works closely with Phase 4 Ground volunteer David Viera and wrote the code for David Viera’s LMX2594 oscillator and CW beacon project. David Viera demonstrated this system at GNU Radio Conference 2018 to great acclaim.

David Fannin has worked on a number of oscillator and SDR projects, his github account is https://github.com/dfannin, and he is committed to open source development in advanced digital communications.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Open Research Institute and Phase 4 Ground are honored to be given the chance to put advanced software defined radio hardware like the LimeSDR Mini into the hands of active developers across the world. We are ready to help make the most of this very generous donation to open source space communications work.

-Michelle W5NYV

Posted on

HamSci Data Plane + Satellite (research questions and proposed work plan)

Link to PDF

Abstract
HamSci, or Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation, advances scientific research and understanding through amateur radio activities. Primary cultural benefits include the development of new technologies along with providing excellent educational opportunities for both the amateur community and the general public.

The HamSci Space Weather System is a HamSci project. HamSci Space Weather Stations form a distributed radio network dedicated to space weather research. HamSci Space Weather Stations produce receiver data from transmitters associated with coordinated observations. Sensors range from ground magnetometers, to ionospheric sounders, to lightning detectors and more. The diversity of sensor types means a wide variety of radios can participate.

A collaboration between HamSci and Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) was proposed at the Digital Communications Conference (DCC) on 14-16 September 2018 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Discussions about custom software-defined radio hardware designed, built, and sold by TAPR as HamSci Space Weather Stations began at the conference and continued though a Google Group.

HamSci presented at the TAPR DCC Sunday Seminar. Slides introducing possible sensor types from that presentation are reproduced throughout the full document linked above.
The receiver network employs a wide variety of sensor types. Combining sensor data from disparate sources, when the end result has greater certainty, accuracy, or quality than if the data was used individually, is called sensor fusion. The HamSci Space Weather System, as proposed above, can be affordably accomplished through sensor fusion.

For example, a $150 dedicated lightning detector on a Raspberry Pi in Florida, USA can participate in this network with a $6331 USRP X310 station sampling at highest rate and bandwidth in Madrid, Spain. The inexpensive data from the lightning detector may enhance the data from the expensive radio and increase scientific knowledge. Another example is a set of five inexpensive radios configured as ionosondes. The data combined is better than any one station’s individual contribution.

Open Research Institute (ORI) proposed an open source cubesat as part of the network. Observing from ground and space simultaneously provides substantial additional scientific value. The receiver network can be coordinated to make scheduled observations that align with satellite passes. This can be enabled with SatNOGS open source software. See https://satnogs.org/ for more information about this open source satellite network on the ground.

ORI believes that the central challenge of the HamSci Space Weather Station project is not the radio hardware. It is how the radios are interconnected, what metadata is accepted, how observations are scheduled, how the interactions between different sensor data is modeled, and how the large quantity of data is handled, organized, and re-used over time. This is the Data Plane.

Posted on

GEO and HEO Launch Update – Phase 4 Ground Supported Payloads

We don’t like keeping secrets. However, we do have some secrets.

The Phase 4B payload, and the other related projects that we have actively supported (like CQC) all require launches.

We have a launch with the Wide Field of View payload with the Air Force. The good news is how well we did in getting engineering approval for this launch. We have a ride. The bad news is the cost of the launch. It is $6 million and they can guarantee us about one year and not even guarantee us it will be over the United States. We have decided we cannot ask the community for $6M to support this launch. It’s just not a good deal for US hams.

Fortunately there’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes for additional launches. This work has been going on for a while.

I can’t share the details. I can say that our prospects have never been better. Anyone following along and helping the project, anyone that has been with us through a lot of challenging experiences, deserves to know that we are absolutely serious, focused, and unrelenting in obtaining multiple launches for this technology.

Traditionally, an amateur launch would be announced and then a payload developed. With modern digital technologies taking significantly longer development time than legacy technologies, and with opportunistic short-notice launches becoming more the norm, this design pattern really can’t work for us. That’s one of the reasons we need to work hard, now, as if the launch was imminent. Howie DeFelice and I wrote an article for QEX about this.

Working hard without a launch date is a lot to ask of people that are not getting paid and in some cases not being given the support or recognition they should be getting.

In the new year, we’ll be doing just that and asking for more in terms of technology demonstration and development from the team. The next big technology demonstration will be HamCation, and the most ambitious goal for that is to have LDPC working on an FPGA with interactive controls. This is the heart of the coding part of the receiver.

A GNU Radio LDPC demonstration can be seen in a recent video report, and the GPU version can be run by anyone with a late model Nvidia GPU.

Until HamCation, our goal is to get the air interface into the best possible shape. We need to capture the excellent progress we’ve made and make it as easy as possible for upcoming payloads to say “Yes!” to Phase 4 Ground.

There’s plenty going on. Progress is good. Launch prospects are part of that good news. A lot of the work is invisible during the negotiating process, but we are working as hard as we can to make it more than worth the wait.

-Michelle W5NYV

Posted on

Hardware Donation for Open Source Space Communications Work – LimeSDR Mini Kits Available

Thanks to the enormous generosity of MyriadRF, Phase 4 Ground has some hardware help!

Five LimeSDR Mini Kits have been given to Phase 4 Ground for open source satellite communications development work.

We want to get these into as many hardworking hands as possible! Write me today with your need and let’s get you up and running.

I recently set up a LimeSDR Mini with GNU Radio with one of our list members and it went very well. This is a wonderful SDR. The LimeSuite GUI allows prototyping with what feels like every register setting on the controller. Performance is very good.

For a talk about LimeSDR (and the extended frequency range chip) from Microwave Update 2018 from Mike Seguin N1JEZ, please see https://youtu.be/F76BzezuCmw

LDPC-BCH decode on the FPGA is a current area of great interest for us. LDPC-BCH is the forward error correction for DVB-S2/X. But, we are also interested in doing more with Polar codes. There is at least one open source satellite payload project that has specified Polar forward error correcting codes. There is very little open source work here, it’s cutting edge, and Polar codes are specified for use in 5G communications. Polar codes are the first family of error-correcting codes that achieve the Shannon capacity for a wide range of communication channels with efficient encoding and decoding.

The FPGA on the LimeSDR mini is the Intel MAX 10 (10M16SAU169C8G 169-UBGA). How far can we take it?

What else needs doing? How about a SatNOGS station with the LimeSDR mini? A proof of concept of Phase 4 Ground authentication and authorization scheme? Handling the Generic Stream Encapsulation streams properly from the downlink for amateur communications? Plenty to do! Dive in and we will help you.

Contact Michelle W5NYV w5nyv@arrl.net to sign on and get kitted up.

Posted on

Open Source Low Density Parity Check Decoder for DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, DVB-T2 Working in GNU Radio

An open source Low Density Parity Check decode from Phase 4 Ground is working for DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, and DVB-T2 in GNU Radio, thanks to the efforts of Ahmet Inan, Ron Economos, and Charles Brain.

This is a big step forward for open source satellite communications.

Video report here:
https://youtu.be/fOYVOgybFKY

Out of Tree (OOT) GNU Radio module by Dr. MPEG here:
https://github.com/drmpeg/gr-dvbldpc

Decoder by Ahmet here:
https://github.com/xdsopl/LDPC

Posted on

3D Printed Cassegrain Antenna Structures at 122GHz Demonstrated at Microwave Update 2018

Here’s a demonstration of a 3D printed Cassegrain antenna system for 122GHz amateur radio. It was presented in the demonstration room at Microwave Update 2018.

https://youtu.be/NbTWWNvtvOU

122 GHz is an amateur radio band. There’s activity and distance records and some contesting. 122GHz has significant attenuation due to atmospheric absorption. Specifically, oxygen gets in the way.

I’ve been working on a 3D printed rig for 122GHz. This was sparked by a request from Alan Devlin VK3XPD for a 3D printed subreflector for a Cassegrain dish. People generally get by with a flat subreflector, but you can get better performance if it’s a hyperbolic curve matched to the feed and parabolic dish.

So what is 122GHz good for? Well, car radar for one thing. That’s what Silicon Radar does. They’re a company in Germany, and they have a radar development board and Millimeter Wave Integrated Circuits (MMICs) for 122GHz. The patch antennas are actually on the chip. The dev boards were used in this experiment. They send out a wide chirped radar signal and measure the return. There is software provided by Silicon Radar that runs the dev board.

The goal for Microwave Update 2018 was to verify a 3D printed Cassegrain antenna design for 122GHz amateur use. This design was adapted from the Customizable Cassegrain dish by drxenocide on Thingiverse. Link is in the show notes. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1935824

This thing creates a customizable Cassegrain Reflector dish. It was created using the equations from the paper by Peter Hannan, “Microwave antennas derived from the Cassegrain telescope,” in IRE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 140-153, March 1961.

The antenna parts were designed, the 3d model specified, the parts were printed, the resulting pieces were metallized (with MG Chemicals conductive paint), and then the parts combined into their final form.

Design files and papers can be found here: https://github.com/Abraxas3d/122GHz

The assemblies were taken to Microwave Update 2018 and set up in the demonstration room. Here’s what happened next.

So what were the results? Here’s some screenshots from the Silicon Radar software with and without the Cassegrain antenna installed over the stock lens in the development board.

And, there’s more. Please read Mike Levelle’s wonderful report on his efforts with the Silicon Radar chip in building a simple 122GHz transceiver. Link is in the show notes.

Mike has a tremendous amount of expertise and enthusiasm for the higher microwave bands and is a fantastic mentor.

http://www.bay-net.org/docs/k6ml-122GHzradio-baycon2018.pdf

What’s next? Building a radio! Stay tuned and stay on the air!

http://microwaveupdate.org/

Posted on

Open Research Institute – Open Source CubeSat Workshop 2018 Madrid, Spain

Bruce Perens was the keynote speaker at the Open Source CubeSat Workshop 2018 in Madrid, Spain.

Michelle Thompson presented a technical update on Phase 4 Ground activities and described recent progress with DVB-S2X receivers in GNU Radio.

Held at the European Space Astronomy Center in late September 2018, the conference drew 122 diverse and enthusiastic participants from 22 countries. Two days of presentations and workgroups resulted in a remarkable amount of progress and sharing in support of open source spacecraft and ground stations.

Below are links to notes from the four working groups in which Phase 4 Ground volunteers participated.

Open Source Satellites – Improving the Starting Point
SatNOGS Report and Discussion
Libre Cube Standard, Community Development
Hugh’s Blog Post

Links to video recordings of presentations will be released soon.

Posted on

Open Research Institute at DEFCON 26

Amateur Radio and open source Amateur Satellite activities at this past week’s DEFCONwere very successful.

Multiple talks across the somewhat daunting schedule provided plenty of opportunities to hear about amateur radio, open source satellites, modulation and coding, and ground station work. Phase 4 Ground had an opportunity to present at Cyberspectrum, and then helped host a Q&A the following day.

Open Research Institute had a booth in the WiFi Village Friday-Sunday. Services provided were the DEFCON ham radio license exam information/encouragement, SatNOGS information/handouts/stickers, Libre Space Foundation information/handouts/stickers, GNU Radio demonstrations and quick tutorials, FaradayRF information/handouts, SDR demonstrations, Trans-Ionospheric badges, Phase 4 Ground updates/recruitment/promotion, and more.

The landscape of amateur radio in space is diverse, interesting, and active. The audience at DEFCON is enthusiastic, positive, technical, and generally unafraid to build things and try stuff.

The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) was there this year, and they are thinking about coming to GNU Radio Conference as well.

We met several university researchers and put them in touch with the right support networks to get their cubesats “off the ground”.

It’s hard work to be part of a event as large, loud, and busy as DEFCON. The attendance was estimated at 27,500 by Sunday. However, it’s very much worth it! It was great to meet so many people in person for the first time that we’ve gotten to know through electronic means.

We are solidly in the black on Trans-Ionospheric badge sales and are well on our way to funding the development board for Phase 4 Ground radios. Support and information here: https://www.openresearch.institute/badge/

We’ll be selling them online shortly. All proceeds go directly to support the non-profit ORI, and specifically for Phase 4 Ground project.

Next up: finding out how to improve representation for amateur radio on interplanetary missions from NASA. We’ll be at the Interplanetary Cubesat Workshop this week at Goddard Space Flight Center. We’ll have a poster session on open source satellite and ground station work, specifically allowed under ITAR 120.11.

Thank you to everyone that helped make this trip rewarding and fun with the encouragement, support, and materials.

Posted on

DVB-S2/X Block Party at GNU Radio Conference

Hello everyone,

GNU Radio Conference is coming up in September. If you haven’t registered and want to go, please do at https://www.gnuradio.org/grcon-2018/

There’s a special event this year called Block Party.

It’s an effort to get DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X receivers in GNU Radio.

We will have our own room and tables and swag. We will have docents enthusiasm and test equipment. We’re looking for more! We’ll have documentation and refreshments.

We need blocks!

Most blocks needed for DVB-S2/X receive do, in some form, already exist. Some do not. Some just need additional modulation and codings added to them.

Receiver design is hard, but breaking it up into small blocks makes it tractable.

The DVB protocol documents are all open. There are implementation guidelines. See https://www.dvb.org/

There are several community members that are experts in this area. There is a team (Phase 4 Ground – find out more at https://phase4ground.github.io/) that needs DVB-S2/X to work in GNU Radio. There is a lot of interest from a variety of other groups including Libre Space, ARRL, AMSAT, and TAPR.

If you are able to contribute to this effort, I want to know about it! I am here to support it. I’d like nothing better than to complete the Block Party at GNU Radio Conference with working, tested, documented blocks for a DVB-S2/X receiver. This contribution makes our open source terrestrial and space radio designs for Phase 4 Ground possible, and also opens up a lot of other work.

The thing that is considered the hardest part is the LDPC FEC decode. We have an open source implementation that targets GPUs. We want to take this and get it into RFNoC. If you are working on this as well, we want to collaborate and support and combine and promote.

The GPU implementation (by Charles Brain G4GUO) of LDPC decode can be found at our repository folder here: https://github.com/phase4ground/DVB-receiver/tree/master/G4GUO-LDPC-on-GPU/DVB-S2XTxRx

Phase 4 Ground is devoted to an open source implementation of DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X for amateur radio terrestrial and space use. We are part of Open Research Institute. Learn more about this non-profit here: https://openresearch.institute/

Posted on

ORI Fulfills ITAR Requirement

ORI has made its public technical data – all software, schematics, designs, and other information contained at https://www.openresearch.institute/public/ available for unlimited distribution at the 2018 Cal Poly Cubesat Developers Conference, in compliance with ITAR 121.11(a)(6).

ITAR 121.11 does not explicitly state that making data available on the Internet places that data in the “public domain” (their wording) – although we believe any court would consider this to be so.? Instead, it gives a number of methods including unlimited distribution at a conference, and making the data available at a public library (most of which do provide web access, and thus we believe this requirement is satisfied by internet data).

Notices of the availability of our online data were posted in several locations at the conference and on the conference’s online discussion system. WiFi and cellular data were available at the conference for the attendees to explore or download our information.

“Public domain” information, in the context of ITAR, is information available to the public, rather than the copyright sense of “public domain” which means information for which copyrights have been abandoned. ORI and its volunteers generally retain copyright on their information, but it is placed under an Open Source license which grants a set of rights including use, modification, and redistribution to the general public.

Posted on

Correlator Troubleshooting

https://youtu.be/T6TwN2FvfAo

Here’s an update from the lab on correlator troubleshooting. We are trying to get correlation understood and under control over the air.

We have two flowgraphs that we believe aren’t working due to the Correlation Estimation Issue here https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/issues/1207

We don’t think it’s operator error, but we’re relatively new to GNU Radio, and would welcome any comment or critique that helps to solve this!

FM_ARAP_to_downlink.grc is the flowgraph we are using for transmit side.

What does it do?

It collects up four analog FM channels, digitizes, and transmits a time division multiplexed signal out. This is, in general, a simple model of our uplink for a Groundsat or payload.

We see the expected transmitted signal on a spectrum analyzer and on a HackRF portapack and on the receiving system across the lab.

The receiving flowgraph is called TDM_downlink_rx.grc

What does it do?

It takes the time division multiplex signal and is supposed to break the channels back out.

This demo has worked in the past, but not anymore, and definitely not over the air now.

The problem seems to be the correlator, and it seems to be the same trouble reported in the issue.

We want to write a DVB-S2/X correlator. I think we can also help fix this correlation estimation block. In all cases, we want to comply with the tag scheme produced, so that downstream blocks already in GNU Radio get what they’re expecting, if they are expecting these types of tags.

Plenty more at https://github.com/phase4ground

Posted on

Paid Ground-Station Control Operators and Amateur Satellites

Paid personnel are not allowed to be control operator or license grantee of Amateur Satellites. In the United States, this means that a paid employee of the sponsoring organization of the satellite, for example a professor at the university that has built the satellite, can not be a control operator or the license grantee.

I recently corresponded with our IARU Divison 2 representatives regarding this issue. Thanks to Edson W. R. Pereira PY2SDR and Ray Soifer W2RS for this information:
The issue regarding paid operators is due to the definition of the amateur radio service as defined by the ITU.

ARTICLE 1 Terms and definitions

  • No. 1.56 amateur service: A radiocommunication service for the purpose of self-training, intercommunication and technical investigations carried out by amateurs, that is, by duly authorized persons interested in radio technique solely with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest.
  • No. 1.57 amateur-satellite service: A radiocommunication service using space stations on earth satellites for the same purposes as those of the amateur service.
  • No. 1.96 amateur station: A station in the amateur service.

The same definition is used by the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/amateur-radio-service

The key point here is the term “pecuniary interest” — in other words, “without financial compensation”. The definition is related to the *operation* of an amateur radio station, as you have stated in your message. Persons, including amateur radio operators, could be financially compensated to design and build amateur satellites, but according to the regulations, as they are presently written, the person cannot be compensated to operate the station.

If the station will operate under a US FCC amateur license, the control operator may not be an employee of the sponsoring organization, whether or not he is being directly compensated for operating the station. The license grantee is also deemed to be the operator of the space station operating under his license.

For those reasons, FCC licenses most Cubesats as experimental, not amateur. Experimental licenses do permit operators to be compensated. However, experimental stations may not communicate with amateur stations.

Posted on

Ground Station Weekly Report #409

Welcome to the Phase 4 Ground Weekly Report!

409!

Video link

https://youtu.be/6tW04jWZGjM

2 4 6 8 Everybody Correlate!

Correlator team had a conference call on Thursday 5 April 2018. Jordan, Brennan, Ed, and I talked on the conference bridge Ed set up for us for about 45 minutes. We covered a lot of ground and got some idea of next steps. We have a repository that has GNU Radio draft blocks that do the Pi/2 BPSK demodulation and decoding, and we need to get it working as a correlator.

We also have a correlation estimation block in GNU Radio that has an issue.

Brennan Ashton reviewed our block and didn’t see any major issues yet, and then went out to see what he could see about the correlation estimation block.

Please review Brennan’s pull request here:

https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/pull/1725

This is an attempt to solve this issue here:

https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/issues/1207

Which if successful will help us and a lot of other people.

This effort is in progress and will be updated as the code is reviewed and feedback from GNU Radio given.

10GHz Filter

We have a 10GHz filter design proposed from Jeffrey Pawlan.

It covers the 10GHz amateur band, has 0.1dB variation over the band, 0.1dB insertion loss, and 20-30dB return loss. It’s a high-performance filter and we are talking about how to get it published, how many prototypes to build, and what the potential market might be. Here’s the first four documents from Jeffrey. These are in the repository at the link in the notes. If you have feedback we want to hear it.

https://github.com/phase4ground/DVB-receiver/tree/master/Pawlan-10GHz-Filter

Block Party at GNU Radio Conference 2018

We are sponsoring a Block Party at GNU Radio Conference 2018. This is a multi-day hackfest, workshop, and summit all about making an open source DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X receiver in GNU Radio. Come and help. We have five solid technical docents for the event and could use more. The goal is to bring blocks and write blocks on site, test interoperability, and leave the conference with a working DVB-S2 receiver. This is the central mission for successful continued research and development and we need all hands on deck.

If you’ve have never coded a block in GNU Radio, then don’t worry. It wasn’t until the past year that I had ever coded up a block for GNU Radio. I just had never needed to. There is a series of guided tutorials from GNU Radio’s website. The link is in the notes.

https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/Guided_Tutorials

Go there, or search them up with “gnu radio guided tutorials”, walk through them, and you will have the tools and the workflow experience to be able to contribute.

Having said that, if you are only comfortable coding in python or C++ then that’s ok too. If you have an idea for getting some part of the DVB-S2 digital signal processing done, and either don’t have time to work through block coding or pybombs distribution, then you can certainly still help by sharing your signal processing code. Don’t let GNU Radio block configuration stop you. You’re needed and appreciated.

KA9Q SDR – stereo field

Phil Karn has shared a work in progress with us. He calls it the KA9Q SDR. However, the module in this SDR code that I’d like to highlight is a stereo field audio adapter.

This works by taking in multicast audio streams. Each audio stream comes from an individual audio source, or participant. These participants in a round table audio conference are placed at different points in the stereo spectrum.

Phil Writes:

I’m writing a lightweight, modular SDR package that uses IP multicast
for inter-module communication. Multicasting is very flexible and
convenient for this sort of real-time application, and I really think
it should become standard practice.

One module is an audio decoder-player. I’m often running several SDRs at once so I wrote it to handle multiple multicast streams. Since several mixed audio streams can be confusing, I’ve been experimenting with ways to help the user distinguish them.

I started with a simple text display that lists the streams and their
types and sources, highlighting those that are currently active. You
can individually adjust levels or ignore those you don’t want.

Since most sources are mono, I added the ability to give each one its
place in the stereo aural image. I’m trying to recreate the famous
“cocktail party effect” that, in person, helps you pick out one voice
from several talking at once.

Audio engineers typically place a source in a stereo image with a
mixer “pan pot” that adjusts its gain in each channel. This works –
sort of. I wanted to find something better.

So I read up auditory perception. I learned that we distinguish the
direction of a sound only partly by the level difference between our
ears, as that doesn’t actually change much as your head turns. The
*real* cue is the difference in arrival time. The speed of sound is
about 340 m/s, so if our ears are 30 cm apart (measuring around the
head) that’s a little less than a millisecond.

This didn’t seem like much, but it was very easy to add these small
delays to the “pan pots” in my player. And it works! The effect is
almost eerie; you have to listen to each channel in turn to convince
yourself that the levels are almost the same.

Conference calls (or “round tables” as we hams call them) are very important in communications. I’ve long thought we can make them much better, especially in how we handle several simultaneous speakers. If we use this scheme to place each participant in a round table we should get a lot closer to that “in person” experience that’s so difficult to produce in electronic communications.

All this requires that each participant receives every other
participant as a separate stream — there’s no central “conference
bridge” that mixes everybody together. This is a perfect application
for IP multicasting. Not only can you put each participant in its
place, the status display shows you at a glance who’s talking. You can
squelch an individual who keeps disrupting the meeting, and you can
even have a private aside by sending unicast traffic rather than
multicasting to the entire group.

A lot of this was done as research in the early days of what became
‘voice over IP’ (VoIP) but it seems to have fallen by the wayside. It
really deserves to be more widely recognized and used.

Phil Karn, KA9Q
9 April 2018

Careful COTS SDR

We are making great progress on the Careful COTS re-layout of a USRP E310 with future plans to tackle the E320. We’re collaborating with AMSAT Golf on this and have gained enthusiastic support from Ettus Research engineering. The next steps are to negotiate what’s needed on the business side. Scheduling talks is in progress.

If you’re not familiar with the term, Careful COTS – COTS means commercial off the shelf – is taking something that wasn’t designed specifically for space and making it work for space environments. This is done by selection of the right components, designing in redundancy at the system level, and testing the entire system for radiation tolerance.

We have a high degree of confidence that the Ettus USRP will work and some volunteers willing to do the work. If you are interested in this part of the project, let me know.

Badge Update

The Transionospheric badge prototypes are being built at a contract manufacturer in San Diego right now. We are working hard to have them at Hamvention for sale. All proceeds benefit Phase 4 Ground! They aren’t just for show, they will be a radio peripheral for Phase 4 Ground radios, providing a lot of visual reinforcement on what your radio is doing and the health and status of your link. Whether you have a satellite or a terrestrial system, the same information will be stylishly displayed. We are working hard to make it possible to command other radios as well. More on that as it develops!

If you want to be part of the effort, then join our Slack and mailing list at http://lists.openresearch.institute/mailman/listinfo/ground-station

Write me for an invitation to Slack. All are welcome. This project is intended to spread enjoyment, appreciation, and success in broadband digital communications at microwave for amateur radio use. A lot of what we do is complex and challenging, but we are here to help and you can contribute at any level.

Thank you for all the support and interest. If you have suggestions or questions or something you think we need to know about, let us know. If all goes well, we’ll see you next week!

Posted on

Open Research Institute Exhibiting at Hamvention 2018

Open Research Institute will show at Hamvention held 18-20 May 2018.

Our booth will show projects associated with Palomar Amateur Radio Club, the AMSAT Member Society Open Research Institute‘s Phase 4 Program, GNU Radio , FaradayRF, and will host the first Trans-Ionospheric electronic badge sales.

Open Research Institute (ORI) is a non-profit research and development organization which provides all of its work to the general public under the principles of Open Source and Open Access to Research.

ORI includes Phase 4 Ground, an open source amateur radio project primarily intended for AMSAT. Our goal is to provide both designs and equipment for a radio that will operate with a 5GHz uplink and a 10GHz downlink. Our mission is to provide an open source implementation of DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X for both satellite and terrestrial amateur radio use. The reference design will be in GNU Radio, and a variety of radio recipes will be published. These solutions range from DIY to something you can purchase off-the-shelf. Phase 4 Ground radios are intended to be reusable and reconfigurable, supporting payloads at GEO (Phase 4B), HEO (Phase 3E), and beyond (Cube Quest Challenge). Additionally, these radios will work as terrestrial microwave stations. Groundsats on mountaintops or towers establish a fun and flexible digital microwave experience.

GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like environment. It is widely used in research, industry, academia, government, and hobbyist environments to support both wireless communications research and real-world radio systems.

Faraday is more than just another Industrial, Scientific, and Medical band transceiver (ISM). Faraday takes advantage of the ISM hardware which works on the amateur radio 33cm band to let us focus on the real tasks we want to accomplish. The FaradayRF Master Plan details these tasks of which providing a well documented and educational digital wireless ham radio platform enabling an infrastructure to be built from is among the first goals. 500mW at 915MHz packs the power necessary to traverse over 40km required by last-mile communications infrastructure. The on-board Antennova M10478-A2 GPS adds location aware applications out of the box without the need for additional hardware. Overall, Faraday was designed to provide access to 33cm to radio amateurs and empower them to experiment and learn. A stronger ham radio is a more exciting ham radio.

Tickets are available now at http://hamvention.org/purchase-tickets/

Posted on

European Space Agency and NASA Open Source Licenses Reviewed

As a member of the Open Source Initiative’s license-review committee, I reviewed licenses submitted by the European Space Agency and NASA. The ESA licenses are close to acceptance but need a little more work. The NASA license is more problematical in my opinion and I am not recommending that it be accepted without a significant rewrite. – Bruce Perens K6BP

Posted on

2018-01-27 Executive Board Meeting Minutes

The January 27th board meeting was carried out via email, and proceeded until January 29. The directors received and approved the President’s report:

On January 9, I retained Foundation Group to handle our 501(c)3 application and our compliance with 501(c)3 requirements and filing of required forms through the end of 2018. The formation and compliance package cost $3500, which I paid from personal funds. This was not the cheapest vendor, but one which appeared to have good notices for successful formation of 501(c)3 organizations – which is no trivial feat. I generally bill about that much for a day’s intellectual property consulting, so I was happy to offload the work.

Foundation group filed our EIN application with IRS, our EIN is 82-3945232.

Foundation group has provided a set of formation documents, I will request that they amend the prototype bylaws to make it explicit that all required meetings may be carried out through electronic communications.

On January 27, I signed and mailed our corporation formation document (filled in by Foundation Group) to the Secretary of State of California, with $30 payment which I paid from personal funds. They are handling applications submitted about two weeks ago, so I expect to see a response in three weeks.

Posted on

Organizational Progress

The State of California has accepted our articles of incorporation and our informational form for 2018.

We have contracted a professional firm to carry out our 501(c)3 filing with the U.S. Internal Revenue service and to do our compliance filings from year to year. The firm completed the first pass at our Federal and State applications, which we sent back to correct some wrong assumptions. We expect to have satisfactory applications soon.

Our California charitable registration is available online.