Course Review: Software Defined Radio with HackRF

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past two days, I had the opportunity to attend Michael Ossman’s course “Software Defined Radio with HackRF” at Toorcon XX. This is a course I’ve wanted to take for several years, and I’m extremely happy that I finally had the chance. I wanted to write up a short review for others considering taking the course.

Course Material

The material in the course focuses predominantly on the basics of Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing. This includes the math necessary to understand how the DSP handles the signal. The math is presented in a practical, rather than academic, way. It’s not a math class, but a review of the necessary basics, mostly of complex mathematics and a bit of trigonometry. (My high school teachers are now vindicated. I did use that math again.) You don’t need the math background coming in, but you do need to be prepared to think about math during the class. Extracting meaningful information from the ether is, it turns out, an exercise in mathematics.

HackRF on System Overlord

Course Review: Software Defined Radio with HackRF

Course Material