Come and join us at noon where Ben Reynwar will give a basic introduction to software-defined radios and to an open-source framework for developing them (gnuradio.org).

A software-defined radio is a communication system where components that have traditionally been implemented in hardware are instead implemented by means of software.  The idea is that if the radio in your cell phone is defined by software rather than hardware, then when a new protocol is required (i.e. changing a 3G phone to a 4G phone), the phone could be upgraded with a simple software update.