HackRF

The HackRF One is a portable and affordable software-defined radio developed by Great Scott Gadgets. It is an open source hardware platform that is designed to enable test and development of modern and next generation radio technologies.

The HackRF is based on the Analog Devices MAX2839 transceiver chip, which supports both transmission and reception of signals across a wide frequency range, combined with a MAX5864 RF front-end chip and a RFFC5072 wideband synthesizer/VCO.

Supported models

  • HackRF One: The standard model with a frequency range of 1 MHz to 6 GHz and a bandwidth of up to 20 MHz.

  • Opera Cake for HackRF: An antenna switching add-on board for HackRF One that is configured with command-line software.

Key features

  • Frequency Range: 1 MHz to 6 GHz.

  • Bandwidth: 2 MHz to 20 MHz.

  • Connectivity: USB 2.0 interface with support for power, data, and firmware updates.

  • Software Support: Compatible with GNU Radio, SDR#, and other SDR frameworks.

  • Onboard Processing: ARM-based LPC4320 processor for digital signal processing and interfacing over USB.

Hackability

Todo

Add information regarding HackRF hackability

Limitations

  • Bandwidth is limited to 20 MHz.

  • USB 2.0 connectivity might limit data transfer rates compared to USB 3.0 or Ethernet-based SDRs.

Set up instructions (Linux)

HackRF is supported out of the box after installing RIA Toolkit OSS.

  1. Ensure libhackrf is installed at the system level. On most Ubuntu installations this is already present. If not:

sudo apt install libhackrf-dev

  1. Install udev rules to allow non-root device access:

For most users:

sudo udevadm control --reload
sudo udevadm trigger

For Radioconda users, create a symlink from your conda environment instead:

sudo ln -s $CONDA_PREFIX/lib/udev/rules.d/53-hackrf.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/53-radioconda-hackrf.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
sudo udevadm trigger

Make sure your user account belongs to the plugdev group in order to access your device:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev <user>

Note

You may have to restart your system for group membership changes to take effect.

Further information