Software defined radio applications - receiving and decoding images transmitted by weather satellites

This paper presents the reception of weather images transmitted by NOAA satellites. The following aspects are discussed: the design of the Quadrifilar Helical Antenna, the use of a software defined radio device for receiving radio waves and the specialized computer software for decoding the received information and displaying weather images.

1. Introduction

Software defined radio (SDR) is a general term for a construction topology for radio transmission and reception that is implemented using hardware components for software processing made with the help of microcontrollers and analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog converters. Unlike a classic radio device, the SDR system uses software algorithms processed by a microcontroller to reproduce the operations normally handled by an analog component, most notably filtering, mixing, modulation, and demodulation. The advantage of this system over the classic concept of a radio device is the ease of implementation of new functionalities without the need for hardware changes. Thus, new data transmission protocols, or new modulators / demodulators, can be added with the help of a software update.