m17-cxx-demod

M17 Modulator & Demodulator in C++ (GPL)

m17-cxx-demod

This program reads a 48k samples per second 16-bit, little-endian, single channel, M17 4-FSK baseband stream from STDIN and writes a demodulated/decoded 8k SPS 16-bit, single channel audio stream to STDOUT.

Some diagnostic information is written to STDERR while the demodulator is running.

m17-cxx-mod

This program reads in an 8k sample per second, 16-bit, 1 channel raw audio stream from STDIN and writes out an M17 4-FSK baseband stream at 48k SPS, 16-bit, 1 channel to STDOUT.

Build

Prerequisites

This code requires the codec2-devel, boost-devel and gtest-devel packages be installed.

It also requires a modern C++17 compiler (GCC 8 minimum).

Build Steps

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make test
sudo make install

Running

This program was designed to be used with RTL-SDR, specifically rtl-fm.

rtl_fm -E offset -f 144.91M -s 48k | m17-demod -l | play -b 16 -r 8000 -c1 -t s16 -

You should run this in a terminal window that is 132 characters wide. It will output diagnostic information on a single line in the window.

Testing the Modulator

sox ~/m17-demodulator/brain.wav -t raw - |  ./m17-mod -S WX9O | ./m17-demod -l -d | play -q -b 16 -r 8000 -c1 -t s16 -

The input audio stream must be 1 channel, 16-bit, 8000 samples per second.

Use -S <callsign> to set your source (callsign).

Use -b to output a bitstream rather than baseband.

Use -h to see the full help. Many of the options do not yet work.

The output of the modulator is 48ksps, 16-bit, 1 channel raw audio.

To output a bitstream file:

sox ~/m17-demodulator/brain.wav -t raw - | ./m17-mod -S WX9O -b > m17.bin

This bitstream file can be fed into m17-gnuradio to transmit M17 using a PlutoSDR (or any SDR with an appropriate GNU Radio sink), or loaded into a vector signal generator such as an ESG-D Series signal generator.

Command Line Options

There are two command line options for the demodulator that determine the diagnostic output.

-d causes demodulator diagnosts to be streamed to the terminal on STDERR.
-l causes the link setup frame information (either from the first frame or LICH) to be displayed.

Note that the oscillators on the PlutoSDR and on most RTL-SDR dongles are rather inaccurate. You will need to have both tuned to the same frequency, correcting for clock inaccuracies on one or both devices.

Also note that I need to use -E offset to decode the data well, even though I see this in the rtl_fm output:

WARNING: Failed to set offset tuning.

This was tested using the m17-gnuradio GNU Radio block feeding an Analog Devices ADALM Pluto SDR, modulating the m17.bin file from the m17-demodulator repo.

Thanks

Thanks to the M17 team to for the great work on the spec.