Beta Address: http://blish.org/sdrdxdoc/gloassary.html
13 - Glossary
| 3D |
| Three-Dimensional |
| A/D |
| Analog-to-Digital (usually implied "device") |
| AFE822 |
| a dual-channel HF AFEDRI SDR |
| AFE822x |
| a 100 KHz to 1.7 GHz AFEDRI SDR |
| AFEDRI |
| A line of SDR's by Alexander Trushkin, amateur radio callsign 4Z5LV |
| AFEDRI-SDR-NET-X2 |
| a dual-channel AFEDRI SDR |
| AFSK |
| Audio Frequency Shift Keying |
| AGC |
| Automatic Gain Control |
| AI |
| Artificial Intelligence |
| AirSpy HF+ |
| An SDR by airspy.com and ITEAD Intelligent Systems Co, Ltd. |
| AKA |
| Also Known As |
| AL |
| Artificial Life |
| AM |
| Amplitude Modulation |
| an |
| ARO My amateur radio callsign |
| Andrus |
| An SDR by Andrus Assad |
| Apple |
| Apple corporation, makers of Mac computers and the OS X operating system. |
| ARF |
| Audio display portion of the FM signal display |
| ARO |
| Amateur Radio Operator |
| ASCII |
| American Standard Code for Information Interchange - the standard 7-bit character code used for the English language |
| AVT |
| Amiga Video Terminal |
| baud |
| Bits Per Second |
| BCB |
| BroadCast band |
| BSD |
| Berkeley Software Distribution - refers to the particular version of the UNIX OS that was developed at and distributed from the University of California at Berkeley. |
| C |
| C programming language |
| C++ |
| C++ Programming Language |
| C-QUAM |
| A method of providing AM stereo |
| CCW |
| Counter-ClockWise |
| CHU |
| Canadian time station. CHU broadcasts on 3330 KHz, 7350 KHz and 14670 KHz. |
| CODEC |
| CODer-DECoder |
| CPU |
| Central Processing Unit |
| CR |
| Carriage Return |
| CW |
| Can mean ClockWise if we're discussing a knob, or Continuous Wave (usually shorthand for morse code), if we're discussing demodulator modes. |
| CWL |
| Continuous Wave, Lower sideband |
| CWU |
| Continuous Wave, Upper sideband |
| D/A |
| Digital-to-Analog |
| dB |
| Decibel |
| dBm |
| (sometimes dBmW or decibel-milliwatts) is an abbreviation for the power ratio in decibels (dB) of the measured power referenced to one milliwatt (mW) |
| DC |
| Direct Current |
| DGPS |
| Differential GPS |
| DHCP |
| Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - this is a way for a router to assign an IP to your computer's network connection. |
| Digital |
| Subscriber Line - a means to provide network connectivity |
| Div |
| Division |
| DLL |
| Dynamic Link Library - a proprietary Windows technology for making one or more program functions available to multiple applications. |
| DNR |
| Dynamic Noise Reduction |
| DRM |
| Digital Radio Mondial (digital shortwave broadcast) |
| DSP |
| Digital Signal Processing |
| DX |
| Distance or Distant |
| ELF |
| Extremely Low Frequency |
| EPROM |
| Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory |
| ETA |
| Estimated Time of Arrival |
| EU |
| European Union |
| F-KEY |
| Function key on keyboard |
| FAX |
| Facsimile - a method of transmitting maps and images using AFSK or other modulation modes. |
| FCC |
| Federal Communications Commission - A regulatory agency in the US that provides a monopoly on the radio spectrum to moneyed and corporate interests at the expense of, and to the extreme disadvantage of, US citizens. |
| FCD |
| Funcube Dongle |
| FCD Pro Plus |
| Funcube Professional Plus SDR |
| FCDP |
| FCD Pro Plus |
| FDM |
| Frequency Division Multiplexing |
| FEC |
| Forward Error Correction |
| FFT |
| Fast Fourier Transform |
| FM |
| Frequency Modulation |
| FPS |
| FFTs per second |
| FPU |
| Floating Point Unit - a specialized digital processor that does complex mathematics operations more quickly than a normal CPU can. |
| FS |
| Frequency Shift |
| FSL |
| Frequency Shift keying, Lower sideband |
| FSU |
| Frequency Shift keying, Upper sideband |
| FTDI |
| Future Technology Devices International corporation, maker of the USB chips in many devices such as the RFSPACE SDR-IQ |
| FYI |
| For Your Information |
| GB |
| Gigabytes - 1,000,000,000 bytes |
| GHZ |
| Gigahertz, or 1,000 million cycles per second |
| GMT |
| Greenwich (England, United Kingdom) Mean Time |
| GNU |
| GNU's Not Unix (This definition is part of its own definition, which is a programming joke related to the technique of recursion, something very obscure to most non-programmers.) |
| GPL |
| General Public License |
| GPS |
| Global Positioning System |
| GPU |
| Graphics Processing Unit. Like a CPU, but specialized for handling pixel data |
| GUI |
| Graphic User Interface |
| HAM |
| Amateur (radio) |
| HF |
| High Frequency - 3 to 30 MHz |
| HLL |
| High-Level (programming) Language |
| HTML |
| HyperText Markup Language |
| Hz |
| Cycles Per Second |
| I/Q |
| In-phase and Quadrature components of a signal. A signal's quadrature component is 90º out of phase with the in-phase signal. Traditionally, this means 90º later at the sampling frequency, as a signal can contain components of many frequencies. A great deal of the mathematics of software-defined radio use these two closely time-related signals to determine the signal characteristics we are interested in. |
| IBM |
| International Business Machines corporation |
| ID |
| Identification |
| IF |
| Intermediate Frequency |
| Intel |
| Intel corporation |
| IOW |
| In Other Words |
| IP |
| Internet Protocol, often a numeric address of a particular device. |
| IPC |
| Inter-Program Communication(s) |
| Kanji |
| Japanese ideographs (character symbols) |
| KHz |
| KiloHertz (thousands of cycles per second) |
| km |
| Kilometer |
| L/R |
| Left/Right |
| LAN |
| Local Area Network |
| LCD |
| Liquid Crystal Display |
| LED |
| Light-Emitting Diode (in the case of SdrDx, the image of a light-emitting diode) |
| LF |
| Line Feed or Low Frequency 30 to 300 KHz |
| linux |
| A free operating system created by Linus Torvalds |
| LSB |
| Lower SideBand |
| LW |
| Longwave: 30 to 300 KHz |
| Mac |
| Macintosh computer by Apple corporation |
| Mac Pro |
| a desktop tower computer made by Apple |
| macro |
| A series of commands that can be employed to accomplish a task made up of smaller steps, often (as is the case with SdrDx) commands to an application. |
| Max |
| Maximum |
| MB |
| Megabytes - 1,000,000 bytes |
| MF |
| Medium Frequency, 300 to 3000 KHz |
| MHz |
| Megahertz (Millions of cycles per second) |
| Microsoft |
| Microsoft corporation, maker of the Windows OS |
| MIDI |
| Musical Instrument Digital Interface |
| ms |
| Millisecond |
| MW |
| Mediumwave: 300 to 3000 KHz |
| NAVTEX |
| An error-checked digital text protocol |
| NBL |
| Noise BLanker |
| NET-SDR |
| An SDR by RFSPACE |
| NFM |
| Narrow FM |
| NOAA |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| noise probe |
| A type of antenna with low gain that is placed near a noise source. |
| NULL |
| The angle(s) at which an antenna cannot pick up a signal. |
| NZ |
| New Zealand |
| Objective C |
| Objective C programming language |
| Olivia |
| A digital mode for data |
| OS |
| Operating System |
| OS X |
| Operating system for the Mac by Apple |
| packet |
| A digital mode that sends information in groups of bytes that are error checked |
| PC |
| Personal Computer - a generic term meaning any computer intended for personal use. PC is often misused to imply a Windows OS computer, so be careful when you encounter it. |
| PCB |
| Printed Circuit Board |
| PD |
| Public Domain |
| Perl |
| The Perl Scripting Language |
| PID |
| Product ID |
| PNG |
| PNG image format |
| POS |
| Point Of Sale |
| PostgreSQL |
| Open source database system. You can learn more at postgresql.org |
| PPM |
| Parts-per-Million |
| PSK31 |
| A digital AFSK mode for data |
| Python |
| Python programming language |
| Python 2 |
| Python programming language, version 2 |
| Q |
| Quality, as in how strong a notch or peak is created by a filter. |
| QRM |
| Man-made interference (radio operator term) |
| QRN |
| Natural interference (radio operator term) |
| QRZ |
| is anyone listening? (radio operator term) |
| QSB |
| Signal Fading |
| Qt |
| This is the cross-platform (linux, OS X, Windows) application development system that compiles the c++ source code of SdrDx into a working application. Qt Home Page |
| QTH |
| location (radio operator term) |
| RBDS |
| Radio Broadcast Data System (same as RDS) |
| RC |
| Radio Control |
| RDS |
| Radio Data System (same as RBDS) |
| RF |
| Radio Frequency |
| RFSPACE |
| maker of higher end SDRs |
| RGB |
| Red, Green and Blue |
| RRF |
| Full RF content of FM signal display |
| RTL-SDR |
| This is an inexpensive SDR with a minimum center tuning step of one KHz, low dynamic range, and no filtering, which makes it vulnerable to a number of problems. Its popularity is due to its cost, size, and easy availability. |
| RTTY |
| Radioteletype |
| RX |
| Receive or Receiver |
| S |
| Usually Signal, as in "Signal Meter" or "S-Meter" |
| S-Meter |
| An S-Meter tells you how strong a radio signal is. The metering range is from S1 to S9, and then in 10 dB steps from there. Each "S" step in an S-Meter prior to the 10 dB steps is 6 dB. |
| S-Unit |
| The values used on an S-Meter |
| SAM |
| Synchronous AM demodulation |
| SCA |
| An auxillary channel within the WFM signal used for secondary, monophonic signals |
| SCB |
| the secondary SCA channel |
| SDR |
| Software Defined Radio |
| SDR-14 |
| An SDR by RFSPACE |
| SDR-IP |
| An SDR by RFSPACE |
| SDR-IQ |
| An SDR by RFSPACE |
| SIP |
| System Integrity Protection mode, also known as "rootless" mode. Also known as: "Here comes Apple, breaking everything again." |
| SITOR |
| An error-checked AFSK digital text protocol. |
| SSB |
| Single SideBand (LSB, USB) |
| SSTV |
| Slow Scan Television |
| SW |
| ShortWave (bands, signals, listening AKA SWL) |
| SWL |
| ShortWave Listener / Listening |
| SYNC |
| A special character or sequence of characters meant to assist in correct data decoding. |
| TCP |
| Transmission Control Protocol - a networking term. |
| TDM |
| Time-Division Multiplexing |
| TX |
| Transmit |
| UHF |
| Ultra High Frequency. 300 to 3000 MHz |
| US |
| United States |
| USB |
| Can means Upper SideBand, or Universal Serial Bus, depending on context. |
| USB 1.1 |
| Universal Serial Bus, version 1.1, port or device or protocol |
| USB 2.01 |
| Universal Serial Bus, version 2.0, port or device or protocol |
| USB device |
| A device that plugs into a USB port |
| USB port |
| USB connection where you can plug in a USB device. |
| uV |
| MicroVolts. .000001 volts is 1 uV. |
| VFO |
| Variable Frequency Oscillator. In SdrDx, nothing is oscillating, but the VFOs perform the same function, which is to change the frequency the radio (the SDR) is receiving. |
| VHF |
| Very High Frequency, 30 to 300 MHz |
| VLC |
| Free application to play audio and video |
| WAN |
| Wide Area Network (IOW, the Internet) |
| WFM |
| Wide FM, a commercial broadcasting format that supports monophonic and stereo modes, digital identification of program material, and two additional low-bandwidth subcarriers for broadcast of auxillary program material. In the US, channel spacing is 200 KHz, and stations are assigned frequencies from 88 MHz to 108 MHz. |
| WiFi |
| Wireless network communications that provide an unreliable connection to a network. This is not recommended as a way to connect to an SDR. See the section on Troubleshooting. |
| Windows |
| An operating system by Microsoft |
| WLO |
| This is a RTTY and NAVTEX station on 8,473.000 KHz that serves ships on the high seas. |
| WPM |
| Words Per Minute |
| WWV |
| Time station in Fort Collins, Colorado at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 MHz |
| WWVH |
| Sister station to WWV in Hawaii |
| X |
| Horizontal |
| X/Y |
| Horizontal / Vertical |
| XP |
| The Windows XP OS |
| Y |
| Vertical |
| Z |
| Depth |
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