Some time back I wrote an article for QRZ about how future innovations might look in the world of amateur radio. It was an interesting exercise as I got to talk to some great hams including YouTubers and authors of note. But a few responses I had were really far out. (One fellow suggested that when cold fusion is discovered, we'd have nuclear powered transceivers making it easier to carry powerful rigs into the woods for POTA). My articles here can be historical -- regarding radio’s early development -- or they can focus on topics of future innovations, but we won't be reviewing any nuclear powered rigs in the near future. In today's issue, we'll focus exclusively on "near term" innovation. I want to see some of these improvements before I hang up my mic.

I began by asking hams about their wish list for practical innovations. Don’t get me wrong . . . I appreciate the quality and engineering in what I can buy today, but I find it frustrating to wait so long for new concepts to show up in the market, sometimes many years after that technology has become available.

I consulted both Asher Waldfogel, K0AU and Tom Rosback, W9TR for my issue. Thanks to both of them for the support and serious thinking that went into this article.

User Interfaces and More

Tom Rosback is someone who knows a great deal about how devices communicate and about how to make them as simple and effective as possible. I asked Tom for a good example of amateur radio being behind-the-times. 

"Dave, we have been let down in three critical areas. First off, we should see ubiquitous and easy control from web based devices -- browsers, smartphone ‘apps’ and computer programs. After all, built in WiFi and wired Ethernet, along with Bluetooth, are the norm these days. Secondly, better user interface (UI) designs should have come around years ago . . . rigs with menus that don't require levels three deep, as well as buttons and knobs that are sized for adult hands. Finally, there are core performance issues affecting most SDR's, as they are not all created equal. Most rigs are poorly performing wannabes with limited capabilities."

Tom and I were in agreement on this point. His experiences mimic mine, as coming back to Ham Radio after a lengthy hiatus we both found that while RF performance is terrific, it's possible to end up frustrated at the end of the day.

"The radio I chose had great peformance, but was severely flawed in the implementation of its user interface. In fact, the UI blows up every Human Machine Interface (HMI) standard out there. Tiny buttons spaced too close together. Buttons placed around the main tuning knob that are inadvertently actuated. Menus that are three levels deep. A single, addressable function knob. While that's a nice touch, I need 5 more of them."'

In speaking with Tom about his disappointment with ham radio SDR, I asked him how far into the future it might be before we start seeing SDRs play out to their true capabilities. My impression was that we were years off yet, but Tom feels that we have what we need right now and require only a better implementation. I had no idea that Government radios from the likes of Harris, Racal and others have been doing it correctly for decades. What is holding back the amateur radio marketers?

"What we need is everything, everywhere . . . all at once. If I'm on 15M and 10 meters opens up to Asia, I want to know so I can jump up there. The heart of an SDR is the digitizer, specified by sampling frequency, bit depth, and linearity. Currently high performance radios use a 122 MBPS linear true 16-bit A/D allowing for continuous coverage from DC to 6 meters. But, the big three use cheaper, less capable A/D converters, so they can only show you a band, or a small slice of one," Tom told me.

It's Still Brand Loyalty that Drives the Market

Another of my contacts on this topic was Asher Waldfogel, K0AU. Asher has spent most of his career in IT and Internet connectivity. His thoughts of "doable today" extend beyond the remote controls he uses for his radios.

“Product differentiation appears to be based on brand loyalty, on ease of station integration, the user interface and whether you get a narrowband or wideband digital output," described Asher. "Some hams prefer knobs and other hams prefer apps. There’s some minor competition between radios over effective CW and some over remote operation, but for the most part, I think we select radios based on our brand preferences,” he explained. (We both agreed that most hams are limited by antennas much more than radios.)

“We’re in a world where HF transceivers are quite good. Receivers are quieter than the background noise and have enough selectivity and dynamic range to survive the busiest contest weekend. Transmitters are as clean as we want them to be. Most modern transceivers are computer controllable, and accessories like antenna switches, rotators, amps and power meters can be set up with remote control,” he told me.

[For me, remote control never came that easy. Do I really need to know which serial port RTS and DTR lines to use for PTT and FSK? And what polarity I need to use? Yes -- it's often a real pain, and poorly documented to boot. Tom agrees that it's not a modern interface: "No DHCP, No WiFi - a truly Precambrian setup," commented W9TR.]

But in the category of seeing "everything, everywhere . . . all at once," Asher and Tom are aligned. "Where manufacturers previously had to build radios with analog front ends mixing down to narrowband digital conversion, now they can directly capture the whole HF spectrum with a digital front end. The entire signal chain resides in a $100 IC plus software that can run on multicore CPUs and GPUs in the shack or in the cloud. This is a game changer because we can process these signals all at once."

So, some of these technologies are out there already. They can just be very difficult to find implemented well in Amateur Radio gear.

A Software Revolution

“Dave, I think we could be on the cusp of a huge software-led period of innovation. There are just so many possibilities to consider," Asher told me, as he feels there’s tremendous room for new software solutions and apps that perform new functions for ham operators.

“For example, wouldn’t it be cool to see a whole band SSB skimmer, decoding all call signs? How about a full decode of everything on the band? Or, a way to flag all signals coming in with auroral flutter. I can see new digital modulation and coding methods coming soon as well, to carry voice signals. All of this could be on the table -- today.”

I asked Asher to explain a bit more about what the benefits might be to you and I.

"With traditional modes like SSB and CW, hams rely on their ears to hear and their brains to decode signals. We still need that. While there’s a lot of software needed to convert a digital band to an intelligible signal in your headphones, that’s just the beginning," said K0AU. "Just like a panadapter lets us visualize a whole band at once, a whole band digital processor would be like a local spotter on steroids. If you’re a ragchewer, it will find your friends. If you’re a DXer, it will find new DX stations or point you to band openings. If you’re a contester, it will monitor the band and find all the best multipliers, tuning the rig to call them just as they are finishing another QSO."

"And there could be more," Asher continued. "With regards to the AI revolution, how about an AI predicting where the DX station will listen next in a CW pileup? Or, a voice ‘regenerator’ that gives us all a configurable big radio voice?  How about combining your digital band with a ham 100 miles away from you to reduce QSB? How about automatically tuning in SSB signals so they sound normal? All of these are within the realm of today's technologies."

When you think about the changes in amateur radio that came about when FT8 was developed, you realize how quickly these innovations can change our day-to-day on the radio. I asked Asher if there is more coming behind FT-8 that could have this same impact.

"With digital processing we can easily go beyond FT8," said Asher. "FT8 is optimized for weak signals but only lets us communicate with very limited messages. We also need some general purpose digital modes including HF digital voice modes. As our antennas get more restricted, those digital modes will help us detect signals closer to the noise floor."

"No doubt there are dozens of great ideas once we all think about the possibilities,” he concluded.

Obstacles to Continued Innovation

My previous editorial on the size of the ham marketplace spoke about some of these obstacles. One of the biggest, seconded by Tom and Asher, is the fact that radio manufacturers do not consistently use open interfaces and standards. I've got a linear amplifier in my shack that I'd like to hook up to multiple transceivers, and a drawer full of different cables required to accomplish that. As earlier discussed, any kind of automation means building network interfaces into everything along with standardized control interfaces. This certainly is not happening today.

Asher pointed out another obstacle to innovation that I had not earlier considered. He believes that contesters can only innovate as far as the rules will allow -- the rules which today police automation. The idea is to reward big antennas and operator skills instead of programming skills.

"A contester with a whole-band-monitoring app that copies callsigns, contest exchanges and operating cadences would have a clear advantage over anything today as it would be much better than spots. So how do we promote software innovation for contesting?” 

I'd love to hear your ideas as to how that can be accomplished in the attached forum discussion.

In Conclusion

Both of my sources for this article agreed that serious innovation should take place sooner rather than later in the user interface that we've become familiar with as hams. Radio manufacturers need to start showing more imagination in their UI designs. Our present interfaces try to mimic the way things look and feel in our world. "To enable innovation there, designers should look to contesters, for they are probably the most advanced in thinking about UI innovation . . . their focus is on the contest app and not the radio,” commented Asher.

I'm sure that you agree with my friends that a software and AI revolution could soon make some fairly dramatic changes in our radios -- as long as the big companies endorse them. One problem is that no one has really been able to make an actual business of ham software. The best situations are where hams have provided leadership for an open-source effort, but this happens so rarely.

Asher commented, “Without leadership and funding, we’ll see ham software that can have a few amazing features but still be only 80% complete . . . In other words, unusable for the rest of us. Another cause for that is the lack of robustness. Even single vendors have trouble identifying the cause of hardware/software faults. Mix it up with multiple software sources and the finger pointing is endless. This happens often with intermittent problems related to system resources and timing. The simple fact is that we need surveillance and test frameworks.”

Tom Rosback brought to mind a book I read years ago, a classic on innovation, called "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School at the time. I think it sums up the problems we're experiencing today in advancing some of the new ideas discussed in this column.

"Christensen accurately describes the issues we see from the big three manufacturers of amateur radios," Tom told me. "By listening to their customer and providing what they ask for, these large companies are missing the innovation seen in smaller, agile competitors who are operating in the margins. This technology is usually less expensive and poorer performing, but over time those upstarts hone their offerings and become real competitors. The big three did this to Drake and Collins in the late '70's and it's now time for it to happen to them. This time it will be those software-focused companies we're discussing that will be the disruptors." 

Thanks for your interest in ham radio innovation. QRZ will bring more offerings on these topics to you in the future.  Please jump into our attached forum discussion at the link below the biosketches.

73 for now,

Dave, W7DGJ

Co-Authors:

Tom Rosback (W9TR) founded  IoT Strategies in 2016. IoT Strategies guides small to mid cap companies and VC firms through the "Internet of Things" landscape. Prior to founding IoT Strategies, Tom was CTO of Honeywell’s Connected Home business. Tom was responsible for new product development for devices, wireless communications, to cloud infrastructure, mobile and web applications. Prior to that CTO role, Tom was VP/GM of Honeywell’s $500M Commercial Controls Business, and CTO of the $2.4 Bn Environmental and Combustion Controls business where he led 1200 engineers in 25 countries.

Asher Waldfogel (K0AU) received his Novice call WN0JBP in 1972. He helped build Arpanet (see original Arpanet router photo above) and Internet routers. In Silicon Valley, Asher co-founded Redback Networks (broadband internet systems), Tollbridge Technologies (VoIP access systems) and Peakstream (GPU compute platforms). He built his current ham station in 2013 based around Flex 6000 series radios using LAN remote control, and 40 to 10M antennas on a telescoping tower. He has over 300 DXCCs confirmed and has scored in the top 5 in his section in several contests.

Have a comment or question? See what others are saying now in our Forum discussion! CLICK HERE and JUMP INTO THE CONVERSATION