Wireless in Movies: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds, a 2009 movie, is not particularly heavy in wireless content. Almost at the end of the movie, although, there is scene picturing a radio station in a flash of a few seconds. It is of course my favorite moment in the movie The radio station is used by the character Colonel Hans Landa to negotiate an agreement with the Americans. The station seems to be made of authentic and in very good condition communications equipment of the 1933-1945 German army. Little of this has survived.

The operator faces a type 100 W.S. radio transmitter, capable of both AM voice and morse code transmission in the 200 to 1,200 KHz range. Its maximum output power was 100 watts, in morse code, and only 25 watts, in AM voice. Here is a close-up of a unit of the same type:

Partially covered by operator’s left arm, is a stack of two radio receivers likely of type Langwellenempfänger a (Lw.E.a), with a frequency coverage from 72 to 1,525 KHz. It is a radio receiver designed to work in conjunction with the 100 W.S. The receiver covers all the frequency range of the transmitter. Here is a close-up at a similar receiver, the Kurzwellen Empfänger:

There is a third radio on top of Lw.E.a’s. It is difficult to tell what it is exactly, but it looks like the Fusprech. It is a transceiver with 10 radio channels from 24.1 MHz to 25 Mhz. Here is a close-up of a unit likely of that type:

Acknowledgments: Close-ups are pictures of artifacts that belong to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Access to the collection is graciously acknowledged.

Wireless in Movies: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Here is an interesting anecdote about packet radio. In the 1986 motion picture entitled Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a 23^rdcentury communication device intercepts a radio packet. View here the movie segment in which this occurs (from the 21th to the 24th second):

The shape and tones in the signal are characteristics of low speed HF packet radio. Afterwards, Robert McGwier, a ham radio operator (call sign N4HY), wrote a software frequency shift keying demodulator and successfully decoded the packet! The decoder was computer intensive and large for that time. The work was done on a Cray-2 supercomputer. Robert McGwier found that the packet was from station WA8ZCN-0 sending a frame of type Receive Ready for number 3 to station N6AEZ on the 14 MHz radio band (i.e. an acknowledgment packet). The actual contact was confirmed latter by the involved stations.

Lest We Forget

November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada. Let’s remember with a wireless perspective.

Our first stop is at the Canadian War Museum/Musée Canadien de la guerre, in Ottawa. The museum is dedicated to the remembrance of the military history of Canada. The architecture of the building, work of Raymond Moriyama, is truly unique and evokes the chaos created by war. The following picture shows the Museum with the wall of windows. What looks like random sequences of short and long windows spell out in Morse code (the first kind of digital signal in the history of wireless) the phrases Lest We Forget and its French translation n’oublions jamais.

The second picture shows a concrete wall of the Museum, next to the visitor entry. The windows spell out in Morse code the letters CWM (for Canadian War Museum) then MCG (for Musée Canadien de la Guerre).

The third picture shows the Peacekeeping Monument in Ottawa, our second stop. The monument is work of Jack Harman, in 1992.

The monument honors more than 110,000 Canadian peacekeepers that served in zones of conflict around the world, since 1948. The monument also evokes reconciliation. The picture focuses on one of the three soldiers, a woman, who carries and operates a portable radio. The radio is a model AN/PRC-25 or AN/PRC-77, which means an army-navy (AN), pack or portable (P), radio (R), receiving and transmitting (C), model number 25 or 27. The usage of this model started in 1962. Over 130,000 units were produced [www.milspec.ca]. Model 25 is a VHF radio, solid state, except for the final stage that uses one power amplifier tube. It is a FM VHF radio (30 to 75.95 MHz), low power (1 to 1.5 Watts) for short-range communications (8 km). Model 77 looks similar to model 22 and was its replacement, from 1968. It has very similar specifications, but it is entirely solid state. The radio is still in use, but solely for training purposes.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Darin for help to indentify the radio model on the Peacekeeping Monument.

Wireless in Movies: Contact

I’m captivated by wireless content in motion pictures. In particular when the content is plausible, either from a historical or a technical perspective.

Here are few words about one of my favorites. Its name is Contact. It was released in 1997. It presents a character, Dr. Ellie Arroway, excellently played by the actress Jodie Foster. The story, based on a novel with the same name by Carl Sagan, is about a scientist searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. That is, radio signals from outer space transmitted by a form of intelligent life. I read the book and I didn’t like it very much because the story evolves at much too slow pace. I, although, very much enjoyed the movie.

The climax of the movie is reached when they actually succeed intercepting an extraterrestrial signal with meaning. The author of the story brilliantly imagined a universal message that any form of intelligence could understand, i.e., a suite of prime numbers. Indeed, their first intercepted message consists of bursts of slow speed pulses. Each burst encoding a prime number. Numbers are sent from lowest to highest. Watch the segment below:

Moral of the story, mathematics is a universal language!

There are several other interesting elements. I like the introduction of the movie showing free space propagation of radio signals transmitted from the earth since the beginning of wireless until modern time:

The propagation model is slightly exaggerated, but illustrative of the fact that wireless knows no frontiers.

During my career, I had the honor to meet a lot of experienced people. People who know their topic and what they are talking about. I recognized that type of people in the Contact movie character Kent. Despite of blindness, he can analyze signals just by sound:

The ending of the movie develops further the fiction side. I felt this not very engaging. In short, the movie is not very conclusive, but it is worth watching.

Configuration of the D-Link DWA-125 in Managed Mode

This post will show you how to configure the D-Link DWA-125 wireless USB adapter in managed mode.

From the menu Preferences, open the Network Connections tool.

Using the button Add, create one entry for the interface. There are two entries in this example, Wireless connection 1 and 2.

Under the tab Wireless, enter the SSID of your network. The Infrastructure mode must be selected. You also need to enter the MAC address of the adapter (can be obtained from the label on the back of the adapter or using the Linux command ifconfig).

Under the tab  IPv4 Settings, select the Automatic (DHCP) Method.

Under the tab Wireless Security, select the security protocol and enter the parameters specific to your network.

Several security protocols are available, as shown below.

Click the button Apply at the end. If everything goes well, the OS posts the following feedback to the user:

The Linux command iwconfig should return a result similar to this.

ra0       Ralink STA  ESSID:”useay”  Nickname:”RT2870STA”

Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:90:96:9F:26:BB

Bit Rate=54 Mb/s

RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off

Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX

Link Quality=100/100  Signal level:-53 dBm  Noise level:-83 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Note that the WEP key is posted in clear and has been erased in this example.

Ad Hoc Networking an Xbox 360 and a Windows PC

This post explains how create a two-node ad hoc network consisting of an Xbox 360 console and a Windows PC.

Both need to be equipped with a wireless interface.

The network is ad hoc. No access point nor hub is required. The Xbox 360 and Windows PC communicate using a direct multipoint wireless link.

We first look at the network configuration of the Xbox 360. The network settings on the Xbox 360 must be edited with a manually assigned IP address. Through the sequence of menus System Settings and Network Settings, you configure the network such that the Basic Settings appear as follows:

The IP Settings are Manual. The IP address is set to 192.0.0.1 and network mask to 255.255.255.0. Of high importance are the parameters Wireless Mode (801.11g), Network Name (mynet), Network Type (Ad Hoc) and Wireless Security (No Security). The values must match the ones assigned to the corresponding parameters on the Windows PC, except for the IP address. We assign 192.0.0.2 on the PC.

When associated to the Xbox 360, the network “mynet” should show as connected.

Over the ad hoc network, the Windows PC can share media with the Xbox 360. The last step consists of configuring a media sharing application on Windows. Media sharing has to be enabled. Windows Media Player has this capability. If a firewall is running on the Windows PC, network sharing must be enabled.

Then, the Xbox 360 must be granted access in the media sharing application.

Videos are streamed from the Windows PC to the Xbox 360. The facility is accessible from the My Xbox Video Library panel. Through the Windows PC association, the Xbox 360 pulls and plays video streams.

D-Link DWA-125 on Linux Ubuntu 10.04

This post will show you how to install the D-Link DWA-125 Wireless USB adapter on Linux Ubuntu 10.04 in the VMware environment.

All the software that you need to achieve the installation is available here.

Firstly, as shown in the following video, you need to install Linux Ubuntu on VMware. You need the file ubuntu1004-vmt.zip. Uncompress it in some directory. Under VMware, open the file named Ubuntu.vmx, from the uncompressed directory.

The default user is “user”. The password for  both “user” and “root” is “password”.

Download and uncompress the file that contains the driver for the DWA-125: DPO_RT3070_LinuxSTA_V2.3.0.4_20100604.tar.bz2.

The following video shows how to install the driver for the DWA-125. In summary, you have to “cd” to the directory where the driver has been uncompressed. Using the Linux command “su”, you switch user to root mode. Then you enter “make” to compile the driver. You need to create the system directory “/etc/Wireless”, where you copy the file “RT2870STA.dat”. Finally, you “cd” to “os/linux” and install the driver as a module using the Linux command “insmod”.

You are now ready to start using the driver. On VMware, Ubuntu needs to be explicitly connected to the D-Link DWA-125 USB adapter as shown in the following video.

After a few seconds, the DWA-125 USB adapter starts blinking, showing normal operation. The Linux command “iwconfig” can be used to inspect and change the configuration of the interface to the adapter.

Good luck!

GPS Tracking Device with Google Maps via GSM Cellular Networks

Sometimes you are struck by the breath and depth of the knowledge and skills of some of your students. This is the case for Michael Nemat, a 4th year computer science student at Carleton University. Michael has completed with me, this summer, his Honours project.

Michael has developed a hardware device and a Web application for viewing the location of the device in realtime. A GSM network is used by the device to communicate its positions to the Web application.

The device design and implementation are entirely his, pictured below:

A view on his Web application follows:

You can read Michael’s report here.

USRP2 FM Broadcast Receiver Demo

If one would ask me what are the most fascinating innovations in the field of wireless over the last couple of years, I would undoubtedly include Software Defined Radio (SDR) in my list. I love the mix of analog, digital, software and hardware that it involves.

As a part of a tutorial that I prepared on the topic, I developed an introductory example using  the USRP2 SDR (available from Ettus Research). Here is the unit with the cover removed:

This unit has a 50 MHz to 860 MHz TV receiver plugged-in. The analog to digital conversion of the radio signal is done by a specialized chip. A FPGA does digital down conversion. The samples are sent to the computer for processing, through a 100 Gbps Ethernet interface .

The software part runs in the Linux environment using the GNU Radio toolkit. The radio is actually programmed in Python. The following video demonstrates my example. The file radio.py containing the code of the radio is briefly opened. Then, the execution of the Python software is launched. On my system, I need to explicitly connect the sound card. The radio is tuned to the Ottawa CBC radio station.

The USRP is very popular with experimenters. It has been used to demonstrate vulnerabilities of numerous wireless systems such as car computers, pacemakers, GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi and RFID.

All contents of my tutorial is available here.

It will be presented next in October, in Montreal, at the CRISIS 2010 conference.

KoreK Chopchop Attack on WEP Metworks

This is another nice surprise I got from students in the course COMP 4203 – Wireless Networks and Security (Winter 2010). This video was produced by the team Chris Whiten and Matthew Ng. It presents in details all the steps of a clever attack on WEP networks named Korek Chopchop.

Congratulations Chris and Matthew!