Posted by speckx 1 day ago
RF drone detection has been a challenging problem for quite a while. Lots of solid state radar/RF detection products have emerged in the space, but it is not a trivial problem. And that is for drones with active RF comms, anything flying autonomously is even harder to detect at a far enough range to actually do something about.
Correct, there is no bullet proof cuas system to this date.
> anything flying autonomously is even harder to detect
Not just autonomously, because even in autonomous mode you would still need other RF like gnss, but you can fly drones without any rf signature at all and utilize a pre captured images saved on board to navigate the drone accurately using its cameras (normal or thermal). In this case, rf interference won’t work, it won’t be detected based on rf signature either, you will have to rely solely on visuals and acoustic, fly at night, and only left with acoustics.. it is a very hard task from technical standpoint.
From documentation, QuadRF: Operating frequency range of 4.9 - 6.0 GHz (C-Band).
It would be great to have a wider range like other SDRs but of course the cost will increase exponentially.
Odd, because export controls don't generally apply to published material (like open source software), but maybe they were worried that because they were also selling the hardware they could have issues due to the combo being export controlled.
Ah, found discussion of what exactly it was they pulled, it was the passive radar code: https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/yu9rei/krakenrf_pul...
And indeed, they confirmed that they believe the open source software should be OK, but they had concerns because they also sell the compatible hardware: https://nitter.net/rtlsdrblog/status/1591657740229046274
Not always, but pgp wasn't exported that way until not long before there was good demand for for encryption in e-commerce anyway
> Direction finding equipment for determining bearings to specific electromagnetic sources or terrain characteristics specially designed for defense articles in paragraph (a)(1) of USML Category IV or paragraphs (a)(5), (a)(6), or (a)
ITAR part 121.
The "specifically designed for defense" probably makes this OK, but IANAL.
Title 22 Chapter I Subchapter M Part 121 - The United States Munitions List - Category XI Paragraph b
Electronic systems, equipment or software, not elsewhere enumerated in this subchapter, specially designed for intelligence purposes that collect, survey, monitor, or exploit, or analyze and produce information from, the electromagnetic spectrum (regardless of transmission medium), or for counteracting such activities.
Wouldn't that apply to every spectrum analyzer?
I don't understand what this is trying to say. Everyone who has ever used wi-fi knows that it works through walls. You try to connect to a wi-fi in an apartment, and there are dozens of other networks showing up.
So this headline just seems...meaningless?
How are they planning on distributing a shared, highly precise clock for that purpose? That's already a PITA if you do QO-100 modes that need high precision, but usually there it's enough to have one good clock that you feed to the LNA... but here? Every single one of these modules needs a very precisely identical timing signal and the kind of chips you can use to multiplex a reference clock signal are pretty expensive.