3 ms·

I'm fairly sure this applies only to SDR transmitters, not receivers.

• nitrogen 11y ago
  There are just as many legal and legitimate applications of fully reprogrammable SDR transmitters.
  • jrockway 11y ago
    What are these? Every transmitter I can think of requires FCC type certification. If you're a police department, you can't build your own radio to use on the spectrum you've obtained from the FCC, you have to buy something that's type-certified. Similarly, you can't just go ahead and transmit on the unlicensed bands, that also requires type certification. SDRs are sold as test equipment; using them as radio transmitters is generally illegal. Now if you're a licensed amateur radio operator, SDRs are great. You are completely allowed to use them to transmit on any frequency for which your license class allows. But there is a special provision in the laws for amateur radio operators; we are specifically licensed to build our own equipment. (And keep in mind that the use case for amateur radio service is limited by the same law; if you're not using it to establish 2-way communication with another amateur, you're doing something illegal. There are exceptions, though, and the FCC doesn't seem too picky. WSPR and other propagation beacons are strictly one-way affairs, but are tolerated.)
• edude03 11y ago
  Nowadays every integrated transceiver is an SDR. It's much cheaper to build hardware that works over a range of frequencies and limit those frequencies via software than it is to make multiple SKUs of hardware that are hardware limited to a specific frequency.