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**__ Introduction __**

The goal this project was to develop a software-defined radio receiver for amateur radio astronomers which was capable of detecting and recording Jovian radiation from the planet Jupiter and solar radiation from the sun similar to that of the Radio JOVE receiver which is distributed by NASA. The receiver is intended to be used in conjunction with an antenna provided by the Grand Valley State University physics department, but should be compatible with the Radio Jove antenna. The radio frequency radiation of interest from Jupiter, the decametric band, has a range of 3MHz – 40MHz. The receiver was designed to focus on a 1MHz bandwidth centered at 20.1MHz. A custom software application has been created, specifically for this receiver, to be run on either a laptop or desktop computer. This application will store and process the data streaming from the hardware and also allow the user to select between several different modes of operation.

The system is comprised of three main sections. The first of these sections is the receiver RF front end which handles filtering out the undesirable frequencies and amplifying the band of interest. The second section is the pre-processing section which handles the conversion of the analog signal to a digital signal, digital down-conversion, and sending the data to the PC. The final section is the software application which handles further signal processing of the samples, and has an easy to navigate graphical user interface.

This project was sponsored by the Grand Valley State University Department of Physics, specifically Dr. Doug Furton. The project was designed as part of an undergraduate engineering senior design project at Grand Valley State University. It was designed by: The engineering manager for this project was Dr. Andrew Sterian. Also, a special note of thanks to those companies that provided us with free samples during the prototyping phase of our project.
 * Phil Behnke
 * Dan Soberal
 * Sean Bredeweg
 * Linear Technology
 * Maxim Integrated Circuits
 * Samtech
 * Coilcraft