The w1700k-sdr project has prepared firmware and a set of utilities that turn the Gemtek W1700K Wi-Fi 7 wireless router into a software-defined radio system (SDR), capable of receiving and analyzing radio signals over a wide frequency range. The code is written in C and Python and is distributed under the MIT license, with the exception of the kernel module, which is supplied under GPLv2.
After replacing the stock firmware, w1700k-sdr reprograms the MediaTek MT7996 radio chip to capture arbitrary radio signals, not limited to Wi-Fi channels. The Airoha AN7581 SoC used in the router is used for primary processing of data from the radio chip and sending it to an external computer connected via 10 Gigabit Ethernet via UDP, at a speed of up to 320 million samples per second (Msps). On a computer, data is analyzed and visualized using graphs and spectrograms.
Firmware was created from scratch without using proprietary MediaTek code, but using code from the driver mt76, supplied under the BSD license. The firmware independently initializes the radio chip and controls it through commands from the host. Instead of a rigid link to channels, it is possible to configure the local oscillator to any frequency in the ranges 2.081-2.748 GHz, 4.647-7.509 GHz and 4.707-7.576 GHz with steps of 2.98 Hz or 11.9 Hz. The frequency can be changed on the fly with a delay of about 1 ms.
