The Who What When Where Why
Open Research Institute is a non-profit dedicated to open source digital radio work. We do both technical and regulatory work. Our designs are intended for both space and terrestrial deployment. We’re all volunteer.
You can get involved by visiting https://openresearch.institute/getting-started
Membership is free. All work is published to the general public at no cost. Our work can be reviewed and designs downloaded at https://github.com/OpenResearchInstitute
We equally value ethical behavior and over-the-air demonstrations of innovative and relevant open source solutions. We offer remotely accessible lab benches for microwave band radio hardware and software development. We host meetups and events at least once a week. Members come from around the world.
ORI’s AmbaSat Payload Moves Forward
AmbaSat writes: “For any space satellite company, the journey to orbit is filled with challenges. Designing and testing hardware, developing software, and securing a launch provider are all major hurdles. However, one of the most rigorous and complex aspects of this journey is meeting the regulatory requirements for an Orbital Operations Licence.
After an immense amount of work, we’re thrilled to announce that we have officially submitted our Orbital Operations Licence application to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
This marks a significant milestone for AmbaSat. It’s been a long road to get here, filled with dedication, innovation, and perseverance. Of course, submission is just the beginning—there’s still plenty of work ahead. But this moment brings us one step closer to orbit, and we couldn’t be more excited.
Now, we enter the final phase of preparation—think of it as reaching the last level of a game, where the ultimate challenge awaits: launching into space.”
ORI is an early supporter of AmbaSat and has used the board in several ways. One of the modifications to the board can be found at https://github.com/ambasat/AmbaSat-1/pull/10
We made a number of these modified boards and the performance was improved.
We will send our original AmbaSat board in for integration into the payload and a UK launch after the license application process successfully concludes.
We have leveraged AmbaSat to great success as an educational platform and look forward to it reaching space.
Earth-Venus-Earth: Bouncing Signals Off Our Planetary Neighbor
What is the Earth-Venus-Earth Project?
The Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) project is an ambitious radio communications experiment from the citizen science and amateur radio communities working to bounce radio signals off the planet Venus and receive them back on Earth.
Why Venus?
Venus is our closest planetary neighbor and presents a fascinating target for radio experiments. When Venus is at its closest approach to Earth, we have the best chance of using it as a reflective surface for certain radio frequencies. By bouncing signals off Venus, we can:
1. Push the boundaries of amateur radio capabilities
2. Gather more data about Venus’s atmospheric and surface communications reflectivity properties
3. Develop techniques that could be useful for future deep space amateur communications
4. Achieve something extraordinary with open-source technology and collaborative effort
Our Contribution: Can the Connection be Made?
One of the most crucial aspects of any radio communications project is understanding whether a signal can successfully travel from point A to point B (and in our case, back to point A again). This is where our work on the EVE link budget comes in.
What’s a Link Budget?
A link budget is essentially an accounting of all the factors that strengthen or weaken a radio signal as it travels. Imagine tracking a water droplet’s journey through a series of pipes, pumps, and filters – you need to know where water is added or lost to understand if enough will reach the destination. Or imagine tracking your income and expenses over the course of a month.
Similarly, with radio signals, we need to account for:
– How much power we can transmit from Earth
– How much signal is lost traveling through space
– How much signal scatters when it hits Venus
– How much returns toward Earth
– How sensitive our receiving equipment must be to detect the returning signal
Our Achievements
Volunteers at Open Research Institute have developed a comprehensive link budget model for the EVE project that demonstrates feasibility, required specifications, timing windows, and open collaboration.
1. Feasibility: We’ve shown that with access to some of the largest amateur dishes, such as at DSES, Dwingeloo, Stockert, and potentially other sites, that amateur radio equipment and techniques can potentially bounce signals off Venus. Probably the most significant contribution is showing mathematically how difficult EVE is and how nearly all weak signal modes that currently exist in amateur radio will not close the link.
2. Required Specifications: We’ve determined the minimum requirements for transmitters, antennas, and receivers needed to make this connection. We’ve contributed several new sections and quantified techniques for this attempt.
3. Timing Windows: We’ve mapped the optimal time periods when Venus is positioned correctly relative to Earth for successful signal reflection, and identified challenging characteristics in the radio environment.
4. Open Collaboration: All our calculations, models, and results are openly shared, allowing amateur radio operators worldwide to participate in, critique, correct, or reproduce our work.
What Makes This Special
What sets our work apart is that we’re approaching this as an open research initiative. The link budget work we’ve completed serves as a roadmap for anyone interested in participating in or learning more about Earth-Venus-Earth communications.
Next Steps
With our link budget analysis nearing completion we’re now considering putting together an Earth-Mars-Earth link budget. We are also studying the possibility of whether distributed receivers can be used for Earth-Moon-Earth to achieve anything of note.
Join the Exploration
If you’re interested in radio, space, or innovative open research, we welcome your participation. The beauty of open research is that everyone brings unique perspectives and skills that strengthen the entire project. Visit the Open Research Institute website at https://openresearch.institute/getting-started to learn how you can be part of this exciting journey to bounce signals off our planetary neighbor.
This project represents the collaborative effort of many contributors at Open Research Institute, advancing our understanding of both radio technology and our solar system through open development and shared discovery.
Current link budget can be found at https://github.com/OpenResearchInstitute/documents/blob/master/Engineering/Link_Budget/Link_Budget_Modeling.ipynb
Successful Collaboration with IEEE Leads to Practical AI/ML Design Work at ORI
Michelle Thompson W5NYV and Matthew Wishek NB0X organized a meetup about the Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in Register Transfer Logic Design (RTL) Generation. The Open Source Digital Radio IEEE Local Group and the San Diego Chapter of the IEEE Information Theory Society co-hosted the online event. The meeting was held on 28 January 2025 and a recording can be found at https://youtu.be/8xDxeUxWTCc
AI/ML in RTL Design Generation
In the meeting, Michelle and Matthew presented about the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) frameworks. The central question of the meetup was to try and answer where the AI/ML can help the RTL design generation process. They identified core concepts from an open-source perspective and discussed the importance of reducing schedule, technical, and cost risks in the design process. Matthew highlighted the iterative nature of the design process and the need for early identification of design deficiencies and incorrect assumptions. He also suggested the use of AI agents to guide the high-level synthesis process, assist in design space exploration, and improve the performance of place and route.
Michelle discussed the potential of open-source EDA and shared specific recommendations from a European white paper ” Roadmap and Recommendations for Open Source EDA in Europe”, which can be found at https://fossi-foundation.org/resources/eu-roadmap.
Michelle highlighted the challenges of limited access to EDA software and the semiconductor workforce shortage in the US. These are problems also shared by the tech industry in Europe. She mentioned the positive impact of open-source initiatives like the RISC-V processor and the Google Skywater Process Design Kit (PDK). The technical recommendations from the paper included focusing more on analog and mixed-signal designs, interoperability and verification, and system-on-chip integration. She also emphasized the importance of proper licensing, funding, sustainability, and industry training for both open-source and AI/ML projects. Another recommendation from Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi) Foundation was for more conferences, workshops, and events to better distribute the vast amount of innovative and exciting information and developments in this field.
Michelle discussed the use of large language models and automated writing of HDL for design IP. She shared her experience with ORI’s Remote Labs Matlab HDL Coder toolbox, which can produce high-quality, human-readable HDL code but requires a lengthy process and is not suitable for complex monolithic designs. She also mentioned the use of AI and ML in deep learning hardware models and their potential to inform the design process. Michelle explained a survey of experts in the field, which showed a bias towards proprietary tools being perceived as high-quality, and lesser expectations concerning quality from both Open Source and AI/ML tools. Matthew then introduced a set of relevant papers he had found in his literature search, focusing on areas such as RTL generation, hardware verification, testbench generation, and formal verification. His call for action was to try to put some of the potential of the work published in these papers to inform and improve the design process into actual Open Source practice.
Matthew talked about about the role of of AI/ML in analog design, signal processing, and network planning. He suggested that AI tools can help with analog design, potentially enabling non-specialists to experiment and learn. He discussed the use of AI/ML in detecting convolutional codes, channel estimation, and radio map generation for network planning. There is significant overlap with information theory in these applications, particularly in tracking entropy levels in codes and signals. Michelle mentioned that the Information Theory and Applications Workshop 9-14 February 2025 would probably have a lot of AI/ML content. She then described successful technology demonstrations by DARPA in 2019 showing improved spectrum efficiency using AI/ML models. This proof of concept from DARPA sparked a great deal of interest from academia, industry, and regulators.
Daniel, Michelle, and Matthew discussed the pros and cons of using proprietary versus open-source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. Michelle described the challenges of open-source projects, such as the lack of funding, limited market size, and difficulty in maintaining quality. Matthew shared his experience with open-source simulators, noting their limitations in terms of feature set parity and language coverage. Daniel suggested that open-source solutions might take longer to develop but could benefit from advancements in AI tools. Michelle and Matthew agreed that the EDA market is small, which contributes to the high cost of proprietary tools. The consensus from the participants was that while there are good open-source projects addressing AI/ML in RTL design generation, many of them may not yet be ready for complex designs.
It was resolved to pick one or more of the many tools and projects mentioned in the presentation, and give it a try. Reports about the first-hand experiences would then be shared in future IEEE meeting collaborations, to put the recommendations from FOSSi and the rubrics from Matthew into better context.
AI RTTY and DeepReceiver
After the EDA meeting, the search for applications of interest to the ORI community sharpened into further focus.
Matthew found a survey paper “Deep Learning in Wireless Communication Receiver: A Study” by Doha and Abdelhadi. One of the references was a paper about a project called DeepReceiver, titled “DeepReceiver: A Deep Learning-Based Intelligent Receiver for Wireless Communication in the Physical Layer”. These papers helped us figure out the next step for the Artificial Intelligent Radio Teletype (RTTY) receiver project.
Up until this point, our machine learning model identified one stand-alone individually transmitted RTTY letter at a time. The DeepReceiver paper provided the inspiration and the education to update the model to something much more realistic.
In order to be useful, an AI RTTY receiver has to be able to translate whole “sentences” of RTTY “speech”, and not just individual characters given one at a time.
We are happy to announce that our article about this work, “An Artificially Intelligent RTTY Receiver”, has been accepted for publication in ARRL QEX magazine.
ORI Celebrated National Engineers Week 16-23 February 2025
We were delighted to be part of the San Diego County Engineering Council’s annual awards banquet and celebration of Engineer’s Week.
We were able to present our work and give away some keepsake items at the San Diego Section IEEE booth. Thank you to IEEE for sharing their space with us so that we can spread the word about open source digital radio.
Questions and comments we fielded at the event included:
“How does it work when you give away your solutions? Isn’t that stealing?”
“How do you make money doing this?”
“Does anyone use open source designs?”
“I’ve heard of open source software, but I’ve never heard of open source hardware.”
It was a great opportunity to educate people about open source software, firmware, and hardware, the value it brings to technology in general and the value it brings to digital communications (especially including the Internet!).