Crimean Resident Arrested under Accusation of Spying for Ukraine with RTL-SDR Dongles

Back in early 2014 Crimea was annexed from the Ukraine by Russian forces. Recently we've heard news that a Crimean resident was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service under the suspicion of being a Ukrainian informant who was intending to transfer, or was transferring military data abroad using RTL-SDRs.

A video of the arrest has been uploaded to YouTube, and RTL-SDR dongles running with the Airspy SDR# software on his laptop can clearly be seen as having been photographed. The photos of the SDR# screen appear to show that he was monitoring the commercial aviation band with a scanner plugin.

The YouTube description is translated below:

Today it was reported about the arrest of a Crimean resident, either intending to transfer, or transferring military data abroad.

The FSB has published footage of the arrest. The time on the laptop caught on the video during the search of housing 07:40 date 06/22/21. The laptop is turned on, the AIRSPY radio frequency scanning program is running, the laptop is in the dust - only traces of pressing some keys are visible, and the touchpad was not used. There are many icons in the room, books on radio engineering, a Ukrainian flag, aircraft models, several pennants "Tavria 1958", an ICOM IC-R6 radio, maps.

The detainee transferred the information received to Ukraine on one basis, collected it on the other and intended to transfer it.

The court sent the man to the pre-trial detention center for 2 months. If his guilt is proven, then high treason "shines" and does not shine to see the will for 25 years.

According to an article on RadioFreeEurope, the man was detained as he was "collecting data on the flights of Russian military planes for Ukrainian intelligence".

It is unclear if the man was knowingly providing intelligence services, or is simply an aviation hobbyist caught up in politics. If anyone has more information about his story, please let us know in the comments.

UPDATE 29 June 2021: More information on the story at this link.

Украинский осведомитель был футбольным фаном. Болел за «Таврию»

Crimean resident arrested for using RTL-SDRs to monitor the airband
Commercial Aviation Frequencies Monitored

This is a reminder to those in politically dangerous situations to take care when using SDRs. In the past we have seen a Slovenian researcher almost jailed for performing University research with an RTL-SDR, a UN expert arrested for possessing an RTL-SDR in Tunisia, and SDRs come under fire when Trump tweeted a now-debunked conspiracy theory on how an RTL-SDR was being used as a close range scanner by the black lives matter protestor who was shoved to the ground on video by Buffalo police.

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LibreCellular: Easy 4G Cellular Network with LimeSDR and Intel NUC

We recently came across the LibreCellular project which is aiming to make it easy to implement 4G cellular networks with open source software and low cost SDRs. The project appears to be in the early stages, and seems to be focusing on deploying and modifying existing open source 4G basestation software known as srsRAN which will be used with a particular combination of hardware in order to create a reliable and easy to set up 4G basestation solution.

The reference hardware that they are recommending consists of an Intel NUC single board computer ($699), LimeSDR ($315), LimeRFE front end filtered power amplifier ($699), and Leo Bodnar Mini Precision GPS Reference Clock ($140). All together you can create a 4G basestation for around $1850.

LibreCellular Components for a 4G Basestation: LimeRFE, Leo Bodnar GPS Clock, LimeSDR, Intel NUC.
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Dump1090 with HackRF Windows Support

Thank you to Egor for writing in a sharing his work on modifying dump1090 in order to support the HackRF on Windows. dump1090 is software that is often used with RTL-SDR dongles for decoding ADS-B data for aircraft tracking. He writes:

Some time ago I was looking for dump1090 version with HackRF support that could work on Windows. But I have not found such version.
 
So I forked Malcolm Robb's version of dump1090 that could be built on Windows around 7 years ago. :) I've updated it and have added HackRF support from Ilker Temir's fork.
Now my version is available here https://github.com/esuldin/dump1090. The main difference from the others that it supports HackRF One device on Windows.
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SDR4Space: Software Tools for SDR Based Satellite Ground Stations

Over on Reddit we've seen that SDR4Space, a provider of a satellite ground station receiver hardware and software has released a free feature limited lite version of their embedded software over on their GitHub page. In the Reddit comments the software is explained as follows:

It's a command-line tool using scripts, for SDR users. You can write your own scripts to: record IQ samples, predict satellite passes, start a record for a specific satellite and correct doppler at the same time.

It's also useful to record narrow subband IQ streams ( example: 48kHz wide instead of 2.048 MHz on rtlsdr, a single signal on HF is only few kHz wide).

You can work on IQ files: cut, resample, merge, convert formats and so on.

Having said that you can recognize features from predict, rx_sdr/rtl_sdr ,rtl_power/rx_power.

Regarding installation, a Debian package is provided, installing application and some examples in /opt/vmbase directory. Most of dependencies are installed by the package. But you should install SoapySDR and Soapy drivers for your SDR device first by yourself if not yet done !

To understand how it works, the best is perhaps starting download TLE and print a passes list, using scripts in ./sat/ directory.

For the next SSTV event I'd try to run unattended reception of ISS (from ./sat/sat_receiver directory).

From the examples, it appears that you can script a fully automated doppler corrected satellite signal receiver with the SDR interface connecting through Soapy, and all the DSP handled by the SDR4lite library.

SDR4Space Logo
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Frugal Radio: How To Decode L band Satellite ACARS and CPDLC messages with JAERO and your SDR

In the latest episode of his YouTube series on Aviation monitoring Rob explores how to decode L-band satellite ACARS (Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System) and CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link Communications) messages using JAERO, an SDR like an RTL-SDR, and a appropriate L-band antenna such as our RTL-SDR Blog Active L-Band Patch (currently out of stock).

In the video Rob shows examples of what you might receive such as CPDLC ATC instructions, digital ATIS information, arrival information and suggested landing data configuration instructions. He goes on to show satellite coverage maps, what hardware is required to receive these signals, and finally how to setup the receiving and decoding software.

How To Decode L band Satellite ACARS and CPDLC messages with JAERO and your SDR

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SDRPlay SDRUno Spotted on the Skinwalker Ranch History Channel TV Series

Skinwalker Ranch is a History channel conspiracy theory reality TV series where a team of scientists and researchers are sent to look for various explanations for "otherworldly" activities supposedly occurring on the ranch. In some episodes the team have made use of an SDRplay RSP software defined radio with SDRuno software to monitor the radio spectrum.

In the series the team are constantly surprised to see unexplained activity occurring on the spectrum. Are these signals just RF noise or man made activity? Or something else? You can decide from the RSP SDRUno waterfall and spectrum display which is shown clearly in the clips below. In the first clip they discover wideband spectrum noise on HF frequencies. In the second clip (from 2:40 onwards) they discover a suddenly active signal at 832 MHz when attempting to setup their drone which experiences calibration issues.

SkinwalkerRanch& SDR

The mystery of Utah's Skinwalker Ranch is very much alive

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CaribouLite: A 30-6000 MHz 13-bit 4MHz SDR HAT for the Raspberry Pi

Thank you to David for submitting news about his company Caribou Labs' new product called "CaribouLite" which will be a software defined radio HAT for the Raspberry Pi. The product is currently in the pre-launch stage over on Crowd Funding platform CrowdSupply and you can sign up for future updates on the release. David writes:

I'd like to inform you of a product we have developed called CaribouLite board, which is essentially a Raspberry Pi HAT that enabled up to 6GHz SDR capabilities Tx and Rx, and an additional TxRx Sub 1GHz channel.

It uses Microchip's modem AT86RF215 as an I/Q ADC, DAC and frequency conversion is done using Qorvo's RFFC5072 IC. An FPGA (ICE40) is used to stream data packets (I/Q @ 13 bit x2 / sample) back and forth between the Raspberry Pi and the Modem, over an interesting fast interface called SMI.

I think this project brings new ideas to the table and would be interesting to the SDR community.

The use of the SMI interface is an interesting idea and not something we see utilized often as apparently the official documentation is sparse and poor. But David notes how it allows for up to 500Mbit/s of data to be exchanged between the FPGA and Raspberry Pi, although the true throughput depends on the specific Raspberry Pi model used. Regardless the SMI data rate is more than enough for the 120 MBit/s required by the two streams of 13-bit IQ data that the CaribouLite generates.

The campaign also notes that the sample rate is 4 MSPS, with 4 MHz bandwidth, and up to 14 dBm of transmit power is possible. They also note that they are planning to release a wide range of library code that allows for use cases such as wide range spectrum analysis, a signal / protocol generator, an analog / digital DAB+ receiver, an ADS-B receiver and more.

The software and hardware design is also fully open source and available on GitHub.

The CaribouLite SDR HAT mounted on a Raspberry Pi Zero
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Tech Minds: Testing the Pluto Plus SDR

The "Pluto Plus" (aka Pluto+) is an unofficial and upgraded version of the Analog Devices ADALM Pluto SDR. It is currently available on Aliexpress and Banggood stores. In his latest video Tech Minds reviews a Pluto+ SDR that he has received, noting that it has all of the features that should have been in the original Adalm PlutoSDR.

He notes that the PlutoSDR+ has various improvements over the PlutoSDR such as that it comes in a metal enclosure, has four SMA connections (2x TX, 2x TX), a Gigabit Ethernet connection, a microSD slot, external clock input, 0.5PPM TCXO, fine tunable clock via resistor, a PTT key port and a DFU key.

In the video he goes on to show how to set up the PlutoSDR+ before testing it out on a QO-100 satellite setup, noting that it works perfectly and without any signal drift noticed.

Pluto Plus SDR - An Adalm Pluto Upgrade?

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