<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I released a tool,<strong> iq_multicast</strong>, that broadcasts a USB Software Defined Radio (“SDR”) IQ stream. The tools are written in the C programming language. SDRs range from the $50 (kit on Amazon) RTL-SDR to several hundred dollar versions, e.g. HackRF One ($300) and AirSpy2 ($180).</p>
<figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><td>RTL-SDR $50</td><td>AirSpy2 $180</td></tr><tr><td><img src="https://salemdata.net/johnpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/20250731_152053_Thu.png" alt=""></td><td><img src="https://salemdata.net/johnpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/20250731_152227_Thu-1.png" alt=""></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Normally, a program or process has exclusive control of a transceiver so you cannot have several processes access the data stream. So what I did is create a small utility which broadcasts the data stream of UDP (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol">User Datagram Protocol</a>) multicast… very similar to what online broadcasters of multimedia do. This diagram sums up the benefit of leveraging a single stream and making it available to multiple simultaneous users:</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-full wp-duotone-unset-2"><img src="https://salemdata.net/johnpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-217"/></figure>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In essence, the tools in iq Multicast act as a “digital splitter” allow an unlimited number of processes to subscribe to the stream.<br>The project is at:</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://github.com/jlpoolen/iq_multicast">https://github.com/jlpoolen/iq_multicast</a></p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>
I released a tool, iq_multicast, that broadcasts a USB Software Defined Radio (“SDR”) IQ stream. The tools are written in the C programming language. SDRs range from the $50 (kit on Amazon) RTL-SDR to several hundred dollar versions, e.g. HackRF One ($300) and AirSpy2 ($180).
RTL-SDR $50
AirSpy2 $180
Normally, a program or process has exclusive control of a transceiver so you cannot have several processes access the data stream. So what I did is create a small utility which broadcasts the data stream of UDP (User Datagram Protocol) multicast… very similar to what online broadcasters of multimedia do. This diagram sums up the benefit of leveraging a single stream and making it available to multiple simultaneous users:
In essence, the tools in iq Multicast act as a “digital splitter” allow an unlimited number of processes to subscribe to the stream. The project is at:
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