Explore SDR and its uses for journalism, education, and citizen science
While standard consumer equipment is available for certain radio spectra, such as AM, FM, shortwave, emergency bands, etc., the concept of SDR expands the notion of radio to the full range of broadcast frequencies and provides opportunities available to technologists and journalists that have implications for accessibility of information (including, for example, transportation or logistics related information), privacy concerns (e.g. IoT vulnerabilities), and citizen science, (e.g. radio astronomy and weather information).
This project will serve as a general exploration of the topic of SDR. Students will explore the general space of “what can I do with SDR” and will themselves choose a track within that space for deeper exploration. With the use of existing accessible radio equipment and open source software libraries, students will develop and execute a plan for a radio exploration project with significant value to the journalism community.
Outcomes of this project include:
Note: due to certain restrictions and limitations, it is likely the practical part of this project will involve only receiving of radio signals and not broadcast. However, the general exploration part of the findings of this project should include some information about availability, accessibility, etc. of SDR as a broadcast medium as well.
We will begin to demystify the technology of SDR, and begin to demonstrate its utility to our community. As an early exploration, we hope to springboard several new project ideas from the findings of this project.