Field Expedient SDR: Introduction to Software Defined Radio (black and white version)

This book gives a basic understanding of GNU-Radio and SDR. Very helpful and doesn't talk over your head.

I'm glad the author took the time to write this book. I purchased another popular SDR book and it was basically t said do this and then that and there you have it. They gave very little explanation of why you did this and that. This book, however, explains the workings of SDR and why making certain tweaks may, or may not, work. Everything is explained in layman's terms, unlike many other resources that expect you to know the terminology and workings of typical SDRs. On top of that, you don't need to have an SDR dongle to use this first book in the series. The author provides downloads that substitute for having a dongle so that you can learn without one. You do need to install GNU radio, but the author clearly explains how to do this, so well that a computer dunce like me was able to pull it off. I peppered the author with a series of questions at one point and he answered back to every one within 24 hours. I was impressed enough with this first book, and knowing the author was willing to help, that I went ahead and bought the next two in the series. Although parts of these next two do ask you to have an SDR dongle of your own, the concepts are so well explained and screenshots provided for each project in the series, that you could learn much from these without even buying a dongle. I do hope the author comes out with number four in the series.

Nice hands on intro to GNU radio and SDR concepts. Even if you are familiar with the math involved, the author's intuitive non-mathematical introduction is illuminating. Some comments: if you are a Windows user, ignore the advice to "Use Linux". The Windows version is trivial to install (download and execute the installer and your ready to go) and avoids having to set up a Linux system and follow multiple pages of installation instructions. The Windows version worked perfectly for all the examples. Also, be aware that WX GUI was deprecated in version 3.8 of GNU radio, so use an earlier version (I used 3.7.13.5) since the examples use WX GUI. Finally, the set of 3 books should probably be combined into a single book. This would avoid the repetition of the very tedious Linux install instructions, and people could simply skip chapters they don't need.

This is by far one of the best introductory books for GNU Radio Companion. It's an easy read and the projects are explained in an easy-to-understand format. My only complaint is that the book references the WX GUI blocks which are no longer supported by GNU RC. With a little work, it was easy to figure out which QT GUI blocks to substitute for the projects. Once that was done, everything worked just fine. I liked this book so much I just purchased VOL 2 and 3 of the series.

I had some minor experience in messing with GnuRadio Companion before reading this book so I was concerned at first that it wouldn't be technical enough. I was wrong. This book is amazing. Not only does it take you through tutorials on how to do things, it also explains why things work and gives you more knowledge to play around and know what you're actually doing. This is something lacking from most SDR tutorials, which either just tell you what to do with no explanation, or become overwhelming with required knowledge and information. This book doesn't delve too heavily into the physics and theory behind RF, which is actually great! It explains just enough for you to understand, but not too much as to not overwhelm. I am excited to read the next two books in this series, which does cover analog and digital signal processing. You will finish this book with the knowledge of how to play around further with GnuRadio and actually be able to understand why some things work and others don't.

(edited typos)a good balance of hands on and tech info.Uses wx gui examples, which are deprecated from GNU radio - the user must find their QT equivalents in the GNU radio menus. If you are new to open source don't let this scare you off - twenty minutes of Internet search plus a small amount of trial and error will get you going.does not get into the math, which I'm familiar with, but does a great bite-sized job of getting the reader doing cool things early and often.apparently vol 4 has been a long time coming ... Very much want to see it.

Some may not like how direct the authors are ("don't worry abkot that now, we'll explain that later...") but I loved it. Very, very simple to get you moving successfully along the path to making your SDR all it can be. If you don't want to do GRC/Gnu Radio Companion, this is not your book. If you do, dive right in and you'll get it going!

Spectacular step-by-step introduction for how to get started with GNU Radio on Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS). This book makes no assumptions about your current knowledge level about SDR or radio in general, and the step-by-step tutorial is thorough and very easy to understand. I spent months combing though online tutorials that were out of date and largely unsupported, and this book cleared everything up for me immediately. I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in getting into GNU Radio start with this book first. Not only does it help you understand how GNU Radio and GNU Radio companion work, it gives you very precise and detailed instructions on how to install the applications using the recommended method (PyBOMBS - which I could never get to work on my own previously).

This is the first book in the Field Expedient SDR series that aims to give you introduction into the field of Software Defined Radio.I have tried several resources to learn SDR and my biggest mistake is not starting with this book. I am blown away by how fun and easy the author made this introduction to the complex world of Software Defined Radios.I knew nothing of Radio theory and the resources I have tried jump too quickly into complex terminology, options and concepts without holding your hands or explaining how to use the tools at a manageable, slower pace. I was put off and intimidated until I found this book.The author brilliantly used the approach of peeling Onion Layers (he loves that analogy!) to demystify the SDR world through hands-on projects and some illustrations that go with the theory. I was able to follow along every single exercise. The book explains how to use the most powerful software tool for SDR: GNU radio Companion. It does so in a "let me hold your hand and explain every option that you are using" which is a very welcome approach compared to other technical books out there.I have also bough the next two books in the series and look forward to reading them and following along the exercises.Note that you do not need any SDR hardware for this first book as you will simulate all projects thanks to the files and samples provided by the author on his website.For the other books you are strongly recommended to buy a cheap RTL-SDR kit for $20 to be able to learn SDR properly.

This book provides a basic introduction to DSP and SDR using GNU Radio. It does this at a fairly slow pace and uses practical examples rather than complex math and formulas. It is now out of date in the GNU radio examples though and will require you to tweak the recipes/ flow graphs to get them working which is not difficult or arduous. A well written and accessible book.

Very good textual content, but the diagrams do not display properly on my kindle. The lines are probably finer than the size of the screen pixels. Might be better on newer models.

This book is fantastic for beginners. You don't need any previous knowledge. It builds the SDR foundation in a very good way

So, this book sounds almost useless to me. Thanks for the warning, I would have NOT bought the book in the first place. Oh, well, would have been a lesser wrong if, say, it would have run on one of my Raspberry Pi 3, or with my ADALM Pluto, but... I really doubt it does and it seems so complex and circumvoluted (pun intended), on Ubuntu Linux furthermore... How can the author pretend to be "as easy as possible, for everyone " ??? Come on!I think that this kind of REQUIREMENTS should be clearly stated when you are selling a book, but you have to open it to be aware of that. It is not in the back of the book, so, that "oversight" of the author is a really bad start in "our" relation, between him and me, at least. 0, not 1, ZERO star !About the black and white edition that I bought (not the one in color). DON'T DO THAT. Some pictures were looking rather strange to me, so I read the legend, like: "the red curve is this and the blue curve is that...". Well, don't bother about the gray shade that should match a black and white picture, there is not even any VISIBLE gray curve at all (probably due to the thickness of the original curve, plus the gray transformation applied, the result is … no curve. So, try the "in color" edition (maybe the Kindle edition is better), but AVOID the BLACK and WHITE paper edition.