I had an interesting consult with a major RF chip manufacturer about what it would take to bring this sort of capability in house. They were surprised that I had some pretty exact numbers, and I pointed out to them it had already been done and this was the project that came out of it. Sadly they never told me whether or not they built one for themselves.<p>One of the things about software radio that is similar to my experiences in robotics is that when things get "real" they get weird. In robotics it is noise in the sensors, environmental effects, Etc. In radios it is the way things reflect and refract different radio signals, as well as interference both intentional and unintentional. I built a phase based modulation scheme and it worked perfectly using a ADALM-PLUTO with its Tx connected to its Rx, it needed tweaking when I had it go between two PLUTOs (clock skew, timing differences). And it still doesn't work going through the air between a PLUTO and a LimeSDR :-). The "real world" is tough!
256 sdr's....oh my, that's freakin insane...<p>There's not a radio signal on the planet that this thing would miss...<p>So jelly, government always gets the cool toys to play with...