Peter Morrison, AC1KY, will be speaking on “Aircraft Tracking with SDR” at the Wellesley ARS Meeting on March 18, 2025 at 7:30 PM at the Wellesley Police Station at 485 Washington St. (Route 16), Wellesley, MA. (Please park on the street, not in the police station parking lot.)
Aircraft Tracking using SDR will describe the ADS-B aircraft beaconing system, its development, and the use of low-cost RTL-SDR receivers to display aircraft data. Today, all aircraft worldwide are required to transmit ADSB signals.
The ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) is like radar in the sense that it also provides surveillance information to a controller. However, the way it works is a bit different, which will be explained later. An ADS-B system can
be further explained as below:
A (Automatic): The system requires no action from either the transmitter (aircraft/pilot) or the receiver (air traffic
controller)
D (Dependent): It is dependent on aircraft systems to provide the data
S (Surveillance): The information from the system is used to identify an aircraft
B (Broadcast): The data from the system is continuously transmitted by the transmitter or the aircraft to any station with
proper equipment to receive it.