The DARPA Spectrum Challenge is a competition to demonstrate a radio protocol that can best use a given communication channel in the presence of other dynamic users and interfering signals. The Challenge is not focused on developing new radio hardware, but instead is targeted at finding strategies for guaranteeing successful communication in the presence of other radios that may have conflicting co-existence objectives. The Spectrum Challenge will entail head-to-head competitions between your radio protocol and an opponent’s in a structured testbed environment. In addition to bragging rights for the winning teams, one team could win as much as $150,000.
Portable directional antenna for tracing signal transmitters and interference sources. Due to its small size and low weight, the Active Directional Antenna R&S HE200 is ideal for portable use.
In conjunction with portable receivers, it allows signal transmitters and interference sources to be reliably detected and localized. The direction is found by orienting the antenna towards the maximum signal level.
The wide frequency range is covered by three frequencyband-optimized antenna modules. The linearly polarized directional antennas have cardioid radiation patterns so that a constant DF accuracy is attained over the entire frequency range.
Researchers in Grenoble have had an original idea: to prevent a Wi-Fi network from being hacked, with a wallpaper insulation, which no longer allows waves to leave the apartment. Other utilities may be found in such technology, such as protection of sensitive individuals to electromagnetism.
The article (translated) says the wallpaper is designed to allow phone frequencies in and out.
Jamming of global positioning signals (GPS) during Europe’s largest military exercise has been suspended, following complaints from fishermen. The Royal Navy issued warnings in September and October that GPS in parts of Scotland would be disrupted during Exercise Joint Warrior.
I’m an open source software developer and consultant by trade but I’m currently working on behalf of a well-funded group that wishes to develop and prototype a vehicle-mounted RF jammer similar to this… but with some significantly different requirements and applications (more details available after initial contact.)
Our immediate needs are two-fold:
1. Initial consulting — discuss feasibility of our approach, provide solid advice on other approaches we may not have considered. Expert level knowledge of RF jamming technology required.
2. Prototype development — if feasible, they’d like to move directly into prototype development with the end-goal of creating a working model that could be used in a controlled demo.
If this sounds interesting and you’ve got the right skill set please apply online and we will follow up directly. Compensation is generous and will be based on your expectations and experience. We anticipate an hourly rate for initial consulting, followed by a fixed price contract for prototype development (but we’re open to options).
NOTE: If you are not a maker/prototype builder but can provide expertise and guide us through a prototype phase that would be fine.
The Navy sent to Iraq hundreds of electronic warfare specialists, to bring the cacophony produced by 14 kinds of jammers into some sort of harmony. Protocols were established, to allow one device to send its signal and then go silent for a few milliseconds, so another gadget could broadcast; that allowed Warlock Red and Warlock Green to be packaged into a single, combination unit…The intelligence specialists at the Combined Explosive Exploitation Cells got faster and faster at analyzing which frequencies the insurgents were using. That, in turn, allowed the jammers to be updated more quickly, so they could counter emerging threats.
A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend postedphotos of it online... It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.
…A reader quickly identified it as an Orion Guardian ST820 tracking device made by an electronics company called Cobham, which sells the device only to law enforcement.
The former agent, who asked not to be named, said the device was an older model of tracking equipment that had long ago been replaced by devices that don’t require batteries. Batteries die and need to be replaced if surveillance is ongoing so newer devices are placed in the engine compartment and hardwired to the car’s battery so they don’t run out of juice. He was surprised this one was so easily found.
“It has to be able to be removed but also stay in place and not be seen,” he said. “There’s always the possibility that the car will end up at a body shop or auto mechanic, so it has to be hidden well. It’s very rare when the guys find them.”
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.
It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
…Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
We think this will also increase the GPS jammer market (above google search) – and perhaps some will just build their own.
Dale was on NBC’s Press:Here talking about the upcoming Maker Faire Bay Area, MAKE magazine, the maker movement in general and its larger import. (Dale in a suit — worth the price of admission.) – Press:Here.
On a related note, a big congrats to MAKE & Make: television – nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award! It’s in the Outstanding Lifestyle Program category, up against This Old House, Martha Stewart Show and others, more here – (above video of Ladyada from the Make: television series).”Ladyada Wavebubble”
Equipment that jams cell phones will get its first federally sanctioned test inside a prison in Maryland this week, as state officials try to show Congress how the technology can prevent inmates from using the contraband devices to commit crimes, a governor’s spokesman said Tuesday.
The state wants to show the equipment can be used without interfering with emergency response and legitimate signals outside the prison perimeter, said Shaun Adamec, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s spokesman.
The Federal
Communication Commission can only allow federal agencies — not state or local authorities — permission to jam cell phone signals. But a bill that passed the Senate and awaits action by the House would allow states to petition the FCC to block the use of cell phones from prisons.
The nation’s prisons are one big step closer Wednesday to being allowed to jam mobile phone signals to keep prisoners from using the phones to commit further crimes, despite strong opposition from digital rights groups that say there are better ways to fight the problem.
The bill — passed by a bi-partisan vote in the Senate Commerce committee — would create the first ever exception to the FCC’s ban on jamming devices.
The measure could be voted on by the full Senate as soon as early as this, before it takes its August break, according to Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the bill’s primary sponsor who is also running for Texas governor.
New York Times’ “ethical advice” columnist Randy Cohen gives his take on RF jammers (like, say, Wave Bubble) in NYT Magazine:
The Ethicist
The Phone Ranger
By RANDY COHEN
Published: March 4, 2007
Each day people are more brazen and rude with their cellphones. My husband bought a device that can block the signals of cellphone users who annoy him, although he knows such gizmos are illegal. Isn’t his vigilante behavior worse than that of the rudest cell user? — Name Withheld, Connecticut
Your husband may not stifle someone’s behavior merely because he deems it annoying. So capricious a standard would mean constant peril for people who talk baby-talk to their excessively small dogs. Living among other people requires us to tolerate conduct we find vexing.
Or so my head tells me. But my heart says, Your husband is a hero, an acoustic Robin Hood who robs from the rude and gives blessed silence to the poor in spirit.
I propose these guidelines: If someone is yammering into a cellphone on the pavement and you don’t like it, walk away. It is open public space, and opinions vary about its use. Some people place a lower value on quiet than on prattling about what they saw on TV last night. (An immutable law of nature: The louder the phone voice, the duller the conversation.)
But if someone is using a cellphone in a closed space — on a commuter train, in a restaurant — from which you cannot escape, let the jamming begin. We properly limit our freedom when we harm others. It is the cellphoner’s jabbering that prevents you from reading your book or thinking your thoughts, not the other way around.
Those who control shared closed spaces — a theater, a physician’s waiting room — should jam and disclose. Post a sign that says “No Cellphone Service” so people know what they’re getting into. Anyone anticipating an urgent call can ask to use the land line. For decades, doctors on call did just that, and we all survived. Sadly, this solution — ethical, courteous and humane — is frowned on by the F.C.C., but tell your husband I’ll visit him every week in jail.
After visiting some web pages about 2.4 GHz ISM band spectrum analyzers based on the CYWM6935 module, I tried to build my own analyzer, but with some improvements. The references I found on the net used the parallel port or a serial link to a host computer. I want the analyzer to be portable, and easy to transport, so I will use a microcontroller and a graphical LCD. I had also some old Nokia phones, so maybe I can use phone plastic box and build in LCD to make my own portable analyzer, but… Does it can be done? Let’s see…
You will receive the Designs (Plans) for this RF Jammer in Electronic form. The Listing picture is for showing how the RF jammer looks like. This listing is only for the Design of the RF Jammer, it does not include the Device itself!!! You will receive RF Jammer Designs upon Payment. The Designs will be delivered to you on CD by Priority Mail.
The nation’s prisons are one big step closer Wednesday to being allowed to jam mobile phone signals to keep prisoners from using the phones to commit further crimes, despite strong opposition from digital rights groups that say there are better ways to fight the problem.
The bill — passed by a bi-partisan vote in the Senate Commerce committee — would create the first ever exception to the FCC’s ban on jamming devices.
The measure could be voted on by the full Senate as soon as early as this, before it takes its August break, according to Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the bill’s primary sponsor who is also running for Texas governor.
Ooh, yeah! All right!
We’re jammin‘:
I wanna jam it wid you.
We’re jammin’, jammin’,
And I hope you like jammin’, too.
Ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow, we can do it anyhow:
I’n'I will see you through,
‘Cos everyday we pay the price with a little sacrifice,
Jammin’ till the jam is through
ST. ANSGAR, Iowa (AP) – School officials in St. Ansgar in northeast Iowa are considering buying equipment to jam cell phone signals if they can do so legally.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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