Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Gnuradio Mode S project released

[Nick Foster]

On Sun, 2010-10-24 at 12:15 -0400, Allen Vinegar wrote:
> What would be involved in running this with a USRP2 and WBX?
> 

Download, compile, run. You should plug an antenna in at some point in
the process. 

If you aren't using UHD yet, you'll have to download and install UHD and
gr-uhd as well as burn a new SD card image. Instructions for that
process are here: 
http://code.ettus.com/redmine/ettus/projects/uhd/wiki

--n

> Thanks,
> Al
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Nick Foster" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 9:52 PM
> Subject: [Discuss-gnuradio] Gnuradio Mode S project released
> 
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I finally got around to cleaning up my Mode S receiver enough for public
> > release. The following is a short description of the software:
> > 
> > The Gnuradio Mode S project implements a Mode S/ADS-B receiver. Mode S
> > is the latest aircraft transponder technology, primarily used in
> > commercial aircraft. Probably 30% of those aircraft currently broadcast
> > their position via ADS-B (more in Europe, less in the US), which is a
> > protocol that uses Mode S extended squitters as the transport layer. By
> > 2020 all aircraft operating in controlled US airspace will be required
> > to broadcast ADS-B.
> > 
> > The receiver demodulates and decodes the 1090MHz PPM-modulated Mode S
> > transmissions using industry-standard techniques to mitigate FRUIT
> > (transmissions on top of one another) and correct multiple bit errors.
> > Using a USRP with a DBSRX + LNA + SAW filter, ranges of 220 miles have
> > been regularly seen. The WBX should allow similar ranges without the
> > filter and LNA, although I haven't really tested WBX much. It is of
> > course line-of-sight, making antenna site selection important.
> > 
> > TL;DR: Follow airplanes around from 200 miles with your USRP.
> > 
> > The receiver allows interfacing to a number of output formats, including
> > KML for Google Earth. Screenshots of the Google Earth interface can be
> > found here:
> > 
> > http://nerdnetworks.org/~bistromath/photos/adsb/
> > 
> > There is also a TCP port 30003 interface to use with PlanePlotter, a
> > third-party application to view aircraft data. PlanePlotter isn't free,
> > and I haven't tested it at all, so while it should work, YMMV. If you do
> > test it, let me know.
> > 
> > There are definitely still bugs in it -- one thing that comes to mind is
> > that a very few aircraft seem to produce data which uses correct headers
> > for position packets but which contains non-position data. This causes
> > "impossible" aircraft positions. Luckily it seems to be pretty rare.
> > 
> > Future developments for the receiver include implementation of networked
> > multilateration using the VRT timestamps of USRP2. Multilateration
> > allows the time-based triangulation of aircraft which use Mode S but
> > which do not broadcast ADS-B. Three or more networked USRP2s should
> > allow position determination to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
> > 
> > Clone the Git repository to build the software with the usual
> > bootstrap/configure/make/make install rigmarole; it should compile on
> > anything you have Gnuradio installed on, although with a 4Msps data rate
> > it does require a bit of CPU power. In order to use the KML output you
> > will have to have libsqlite3 and python-sqlite installed, although since
> > those are Python dependencies it will still compile without them. I
> > think that's it for the dependencies. Oh, it uses UHD, so you should
> > finally get around to building UHD and gr-uhd to use this software.
> > 
> > git clone git://github.com/bistromath/gr-air-modes.git
> > 
> > There is also a CGRAN page with corresponding SVN repo, which is a
> > mirror of the Github repo:
> > https://www.cgran.org/wiki/gr-air-modes/
> > 
> > The Python executable is src/python/uhd_modes.py.
> > 
> > Best,
> > Nick
> > 
> > 
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