Technical reports and articles that present methods, applications and results connected with WsprDaemon

There is much information on WsprDaemon on the KiwiSDR Discussion Forum

WSPR, wsprdaemon, kiwirecorder and a separate topic on

wsprdaemon noise graphs

Clint Turner, KA7OEI, who uses WsprDaemon with several KiwiSDRs at the Northern Utah SDR site, has an informative and practical blog post on calibrating the signal and noise measurements and setting the correct values into the wsprdaemon.conf file.

Simplified diagram of the WsprDaemon database architecture and its relationship to wsprnet

Gwyn Griffiths, with contributions from Rob Robinett and  Phil Barnard "Success rates of uploads to wsprnet.org". A detailed study that shows that WsprDaemon has a 100% success rate in spot upload but that when using WSJT-X it depends on the processing power of, and processing load on, the computer and can vary from 88% to 99.9%.

Lo, S., N. Rankov, C. Mitchell, B.A.  Witvliet, T. P. Jayawardena, G. Bust, W. Liles, and G. Griffiths. 2022. "A Systematic Study of 7 MHz Greyline Propagation Using Amateur Radio Beacon Signals",  Atmosphere  13, no. 8: 1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13081340. This paper investigates 7 MHz ionospheric propagation between pairs of distant countries that simultaneously lie on the terminator. Drawing on local noise observations from WsprDaemon the observed asymmetry in reception pattern could be due to the increased electromagnetic noise across Europe summer afternoons/evenings from thunderstorms.

Erwin Serlé. 2023. "FST4W als Ausbreitungstool für die KW-Bänder", Funk Amateur, 8: 612-616. This is a translation into German by Erwin, PE3ES, of a presentation and paper given by Gwyn Griffiths G3ZIL in September 2022 at the TAPR/ARRL Digital Communications Conference. A pdf of the August 2023 issue of the magazine is available for reading online.

Gwyn Griffiths. 2023. "Response to an Ionospheric Perturbation at HF: Results from Simultaneous Six-Band WB6CXC 'Beacon Blaster-6' FST4W Transmissions during the 11 July 2023 R2 Blackout over N. America". An informal report on a useful test on how the simultaneous transmissions on 80, 40, 30, 20, 15 and 10 m, at 100% duty cycle, enabled an excellent delineation of the excess absorption during this Blackout. This is a useful validation of the transmitter from Turn Island Systems ahead of the HamSci Festival of Eclipse Science in October 2023 and April 2024.

Gwyn Griffiths, Rob Robinett and Glenn Elmore "Estimating LF-HF band noise while acquiring WSPR spots". Experiment findings documenting our investigations into RMS and FFT noise estimation methods and their use in WsprDaemon with KiwiSDRs. Unpublished report on ResearchGate.net, 2019.

Glenn Elmore, N6GN "Notes on Improving Station Noise Performance". Version 0.3 5 December 2021.  Noise reduction can become a quantifiable RF engineering problem with lots of pieces to keep track of. But the results have shown themselves to be achievable and very worthwhile. The WSPR database and tools help greatly toward this.

Gwyn Griffiths, G3ZIL "M3.9 Solar Flare Radio Noise Observed using KiwiSDRs and WsprDaemon Noise Estimates". This one-page note shows how the noise level recorded by WsprDaemon at several KiwiSDR sites rose in response to a Solar Noise Burst from the M3.9 Solar Flare around 1911 UTC on 7 May 2021. These results were for 21 MHz WSPR band. Sites with local noise typical of residential areas saw a small increase or none at all.

Gwyn Griffiths, Rob Robinett and Glenn Elmore "Estimating LF-HF band noise while acquiring WSPR spots". Article Used with permission, September/October 2020 QEX; copyright ARRL. Summary of methods within WsprDaemon and examples of noise observations.

Gwyn Griffiths, on behalf of the WsprDaemon community. 2023. As a contribution to the HamSci Festival of Eclipse Science specific measurements using FST4W were made during the 14 October 2023 eclipse. Several  stations (red map pins) used Turn Island Systems multi-band BB-6 for simultaneous transmissions every two minutes. Most receivers (yellow map pins) used multiband KiwiSDR or RX888 with KA9Q Radio, with reporting via WsprDaemon. Many systems used GPSDOs for stable and accurate frequency control.

A series of one-page summaries of early results is available here:

Part 0 - An Introduction.

Part 1 - D region anomalies in noise and signals.

Part 2 - Effects of reduction in F2 critical frequency.

Part 3 - Frequency spread - showing change to one-hop during eclipse.

Part 4 - Multiband Doppler shift and path velocity.

Part 5 - Temporary transition from one-hop to two-hop sidescatter

   More to come ...

Technical