Saturday, November 11, 2017

Smart spectrum display

In a recent article on the ARRL website something catched my eye:

In a related “lightning talk” at the 2017 ARRL-TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) earlier this year, ARRL Contributing Editor Ward Silver, N0AX, challenged his savvy audience to develop a keyboard-to-keyboard mode “between FT8 and PSK31” that would support casual and competitive operating, be more interference and noise tolerant, and be usable by those with “compromised” stations and antennas. He also challenged his listeners to develop a “smart” spectrum display that would identify signals by mode, so Amateur Radio could move away from the practice of setting aside specific frequencies for digital modes. 

And when discussing this on the SIM31 facebook page with SIM programmer Nizar he asked me what they mean with a "smart spectrum display".....so I was thinking what I would like to see in a feature or software like that.

Some of you know that there is already a program called Artemis which allows you compare real-time spectra (from SDR waterfall for example) with those found in archives by comparison of the properties (such as frequency, bandwidth, modulation …) and verifying it through a sample image. A variety of filters allows you to narrow your search, facilitating the identification of unknown signals.

You can find it here: http://markslab.tk/project-artemis/

The above might be the spectrum display that Ward had in mind. But is it smart? What would you like to see or experience, what kind of features do you have in mind?

There are so many digital modes and many are having fixed frequencies. What would be handy is software that detects the mode in realtime and then start the software for a specific detected mode to be able to decode and/or answer a call.

I know that attempts are made with reed solomon identifier like the TXid/RXid you can switch on/off in DM780 digimode program. However, if you don't send a indentifier with your transmission it will not decode or ident anything. What we need is a identifier that decodes a digimode in realtime. But this might be too much a futuristic thing?

4 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, soms hoor ik ook wel eens signalen die ik niet meteen of helemaal nooit herken. Gokken welke mode ik hoor. vandaag de dag zou je toch software verwachten in b.v. FLdigi die meteen de mode herkent zodat je daar op in kan spelen. Het zal ooit wel komen denk ik. 73 Paul PC4T

Hans said...

Hallo Bas, het is toekomst muziek maar ik verwacht dat het best wel zal komen. Al denk ik ook dat de echte digi-mode amateur zijn favoriete mode snel herkent.
73 Hans, PE1BVQ

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, ik wou dit stukje ook weer als titel iets met future meegeven. Maar omdat Artemis al bestaat denk ik dat we er niet ver vanaf zitten. Kwestie van een jaartje of zo. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Hans, ja de meeste modes herken je vaak wel. Maar er zijn er ook bij die niet zoveel gebruikt worden, daarvoor is het wel handig. En vergeet niet dat er ook altijd nog amateurs zijn die moeten beginnen met digimodes. 73, Bas