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GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for learning about, building, and deploying Software Defined Radios. Started in 1998, GNU Radio is now an official GNU project. Philanthropist John Gilmore initiated and has sustained GNU Radio with the funding of $320,000 (US) to Eric Blossom for code creation and project management duties.

GNU Radio is a signal processing package, which is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The goal is to give ordinary software people the ability to 'hack' the electromagnetic spectrum, that is, to understand the radio spectrum and think of clever ways to use it.

As with all software-defined radio systems, reconfigurability is the key feature. Instead of purchasing multiple expensive radios, a single more generic radio is purchased, which feeds into powerful signal processing software (GNU Radio, in this case). Currently only a few forms of radio are duplicated in GNU Radio, but if one understands the math of a radio transmission system, one can reconfigure GNU Radio to receive it.

GNU Radio began as a fork of the Pspectra code that was developed by the SpectrumWare project at MIT. The Pspectra SDR design utilized a modular pipeline structure and the programmability of the Python programming language for easy configuration and flexibility. In 2004 a complete "rewrite" of the GNU Radio was completed but much of the original Pspectra code and structure remains. Also of note is that the Pspectra codebase has been used as the foundation of the commercial Vanu Software Radio.

The GNU Radio project created the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP, [1]) which is a digital acquisition (DAQ) system containing four 64 megasample-per-second (MS/s) 12-bit analog-to-digital (A to D) converters, four 128 MS/s 14-bit digital-to-analog (D to A) converters, and support circuitry including a high-speed USB 2.0 interface. The USRP is capable of processing signals up to 16 MHz wide. Several transmitter and receiver plug-in daughterboards are available covering various bands beween 0 and 2.9 GHz [2]. The USRP was developed by Matt Ettus.

• http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
• http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring-gnuradio.html
• http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spectrum/
• http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/12/18/gnu_radio/
• http://comsec.com/software-radio.html
• http://www.ettus.com/
• GNU Radio Opens an Unseen World (Wired News)
• kd7lmo GNU Radio

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