Software Defined Modem

Highly customizable and DIY software defined modem

We present a Software Defined Modem (SDM) to be employed in underwater wireless acoustic communications. With this guide it is possible to build an underwater acoustic SDM operating in the medium to high frequency, capable of real-time communications, using only off-the-shelf and easily accessible hardware and software tools. A processing unit (such as the Raspberry Pi 4) performs the signal processing and transmits the modulated signal through a digital to analog converter (DAC) to a signal amplifier, connected to an acoustic projector. The same processing unit samples the pre-amplified signal received by a hydrophone using an analog to digital converter (ADC). All signal processing is performed in software using a combination of C and C++ libraries, hence the modulation and coding settings can be tailored to any experimental need.

In the link below you can download the guidelines for setting up the hardware part of the SDM. If you are in trouble setting up a software for running the SDM, please contact us using the email or via the contact form you will find at the end of the page.