Ideas For The Next Generation Of Scanners

[jdebona]

4) Here's my BIG one. Make the entire firmware of the scanner 'open platform'. Like a computer with Operating System and the applications. Divide the firmware into two parts - the scanner "OS" and the scanner "applications". So if you don't like the way your scanner's menus operate - rewrite things to suit yourself. Don't use a particular menu? Remove it entirely yourself! Want to completely rewrite things to be a semi-GUI? Well if you had the time, and the inclination - it might be possible.
But what about the 'applications'? Here's the best bit. Have the scanner running with a DSP that you can load with your own application. You want to decode P25 - download the app and install it to your DSP. POCSAG pager decoding? Done, it's just a quick download and install away. Of course we'd cater for trunking too, all the usual suspects like the various flavours of Motorola, LTR, EDACS, MPT1327 etc. Want to work with something a little more unusual like mobitex etc? Well someone out there who is smart enough could write their own app for the DSP and make it available for download from the internet for all scanner users to benefit from.
There would have to be sufficient memory in the scanner to have room for say 5 of your most wanted applications, and two or more DSPs running so that they don't have to be constantly reloading the apps. as they're needed for use by the scanner.

This is entirely possible right NOW. It would just take a brave scanner manufacturer to design the receiver to be 'open' in this way and permit users to take that level of control.

I think this is about the coolest idea I have heard. I'm not a developer, so I don't understand all the aspects, but I would think that in the long run manufacturers could produce a base system that was a little more expensive than lower-end scanners of today but more affordable than today's higher end scanners. It could monitor only conventional systems out of the box. Just thinking on the fly, but maybe it would be free to download the analog Motorola trunking app and a little bit of money to download EDACS or LTR and a little more to download a digital/P25 app. Maybe one day those people that wanted/needed OpenSky or even iDEN (yeah, right) could just pay the licensing fee for the app.

 

[FCVPI99]

After February 2009, you won't hear much on the TV bands.

Ture

but FM band is still gana be the same right?

 

[klogd]

About poor L.O. phase noise, or unable to achieve full quieting:
PLLs are a comprimise between time to lock on a frequency change, and phase noise.
Phase noise can be improved, but at the expense of lock time.
It all depends on the "loop filter".

Reading these posts about ability to receive more than one frequency at a time, reminds me...
I was recently reading at http://wiki.thc.org/gsm about the efforts to decode GSM.

It mentions an engineering board called the "ettus USRP".
It means "Universal Software Radio Peripheral".
This system is a radio implemented in FPGA and software.
It claims to be able to process signals up to 16MHz wide, yet this has four 64Msps A/D (analog to digital) converters, which says to me it can do 30MHz wide. It means you can receive all signal(s) within that bandwidth as long as the software is written to do the job.
You can leave the Local Oscillator parked at one spot, so this could be of low phase noise type, and then "scan" in software across the A/D bandwidth. And have the flexibility to receive those newer wide-bandwidth digital signals.
This USRP has a motherboard which does the digital down-converting, and then daughter cards which do the down conversion from the RF band. They use a TV tuner card to receive the 50 to 870MHz band, and other boards for other bands.
I think it would be nice that when a new modulation format comes out, that you dont have to buy new hardware, and instead upgrade the software.
A post also mentioned "open platform", so it should be noticed this thing uses GNU radio.
I think this is expensive ($700 + $100) because this board is a engineering prototype in single piece quantity, but would be same price as scanner if packaged in volume. The higher price is also because this platform supports transmitting signals as well.