Turning a Wi-Fi 7 Router into a 320 Msps SDR

Just last week we posted about ESP32-SDR, which is custom firmware for ESP32's indpendently discovered by two experimenters that transforms them into a full software defined radio.

Now, h0m3us3r, one of the discoverers of the ESP32-SDR hack, has discovered a way to turn a Gemtek W1700K Wi-Fi 7 router, which uses a MediaTek MT7996 chip, into a wideband software-defined receiver. Compared to the ESP32's maximum 80 Msps sample rate, this newly discovered Wi-Fi chip captures a massive 320 MSps. And most importantly, unlike the ESP32, the router has a built-in 10 GbE Ethernet SoC, which lets you stream full-bandwidth data out and ingest it on a PC.

As a result, you can capture the entire 2.4 GHz band and a wide portion of the 5 GHz band live and stream the spectrum to a Linux host running a live spectrum and waterfall display.  

Other devices that run the MediaTek MT7996 Wi-Fi chip include the Banana Pi BPI-R4, GL.iNet Flint 4, and Gemtek XR1710G, however it is unclear if this firmware will run on those devices.

The entire 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Spectrum at the max 320 Msps sample rate.
The entire 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Spectrum at the max 320 Msps sample rate.

AI Disclaimer: Claude is listed as a contributor to the repo.

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1 Comment
Catbert
#276423

Great! These projects (the ESP-SDR project, the I/Q access to the Semtech modems just opened a broad door) are a huge step forward.

Ham radio operators will be happy to have cheap I/Q 13cm/5cm access, same for Satdump’ers as they can use it for receiving S-Band satellite transmissions.

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