To advance the state of the art in HF digital voice and to promote its use, Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has awarded $420,000 to the FreeDV Project. With this grant, the FreeDV Project team will: Hire experienced digital signal processing developers to work with the volunteer staff to improve speech quality and improve low signal-to-noise ratio operation, making FreeDV performance superior to single-sideband (SSB) over poor high-frequency (HF) channels. Work with commercial HF radio companies to embed FreeDV into at least two commercial radios, greatly reducing set up effort and reducing latency. Continue development of a suite of advanced, open-source HF modems, with the goal of making FreeDV’s digital performance comparable to VARA at both low and high signal-noise ratios. Continue support of the existing software library (libcodec2) and application software (freedv-gui), and embedded FreeDV adaptors (SM1000 and ezDV). Better promote FreeDV online and in person at amateur radio clubs and conventions. The FreeDV Project team believes that the work funded by this grant will: Open the path to widespread adoption of a truly open-source, next-generation digital voice system for HF radio. Provide a mature, open-source low-bit-rate codec useful for a variety of amateur radio and commercial applications. Provide a suite of high performance, HF data modems for open-source data applications usable by any radio amateur. About FreeDV FreeDV is a low-bit-rate digital voice mode for HF radio. Initially developed by David Rowe, VK5DGR, an international team of radio amateurs are now working together on the project. FreeDV is open-source software, released under the GNU Lesser Public License (LPGL) version 2.1. The modems and Codec 2 speech codec used in FreeDV are also open source. Hardware and software developers can integrate FreeDV into their projects using the FreeDV API. To operate FreeDV, radio amateurs either run the FreeDV GUI application on Windows, Linux and OSX machines or use the SM1000 FreeDV adaptor. Either method allows hams to use a single-sideband HF radio to send and receive FreeDV signals. To learn more about FreeDV, go to https://www.freedv.org. About ARDC Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a California-based foundation with roots in amateur radio and the technology of internet communication. The organization got its start by managing the AMPRNet address space, which is reserved for licensed amateur radio operators worldwide. Additionally, ARDC makes grants to projects and organizations that follow amateur radio’s practice and tradition of technical experimentation in both amateur radio and digital communication science. Such experimentation has led to advances that benefit the general public, including the mobile phone and wireless internet technology. ARDC envisions a world where all such technology is available through open source hardware and software, and where anyone has the ability to innovate upon it. To learn more about ARDC, go to https://www.ardc.net. For more information, contact: Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, ARDC Communications Manager 858.477.9903, dan@ardc.net Mooneer Salem, K6AQ , FreeDV Leadership Team 619.877.6567, mooneer@gmail.com —30—
Thanks for the info, Dan. Unless I'm missing something, I was unable to find a link on the FreeDV site for an audio file as to how it actually sounds on HF. Can you direct us to any such recording(s)? 73 es ZUT, Chip W9EBE
FreeDV is a fun mode to work with. I've only had a couple QSOs, but digital over HF is really impressive. Glad to see this project getting a boost. I hope Open Source software can make deeper inroads with the hardware manufacturers.
FreeDV is going to be dead in the water until some HF vendors start selling radios with it built-in. (That's my two cents on the matter anyways!)
Ver interesting. Some years ago I tried the AOR encoder/decoder that used the G4GUO protocol. When it was working the audio sounded very nice. But it would not work without excellent frequency stability and, at the very least, a 10 db S/N ratio. Some of my colleagues were using tube rigs and we attempted to use it on 40 and 75 meters; it was hard to maintain contact under those conditions. FreeDV may be better.
There were some OTA tests done a while back and some recordings under various band conditions uploaded to https://www.rowetel.com/?p=7779. These recordings basically have the analog signal in the first half followed by the decoded FreeDV audio in the second half. The mcHF actually has FreeDV built into its firmware as well as the Quisk SDR software. Of course, more support from manufacturers would be welcome. FreeDV definitely does better. The 700D mode in particular is able to go all the way down to -2 dB SNR (i.e. better than the 6dB commonly cited for "armchair copy" analog SSB). YMMV of course depending on propagation and other factors.
