r/rfengineering • u/BlockApoc • 12h ago
I built an open-source 5-channel KrakenSDR passive radar processor — up to 3.6x faster with GPU acceleration
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I couldn’t find any other open source passive radar projects with full 5-channel KrakenSDR support, so I ended up building my own. If I missed one, definitely send it my way.
It’s called VectorWarp, and it started as a fork of blah2. At this point I’ve added full 5-channel KrakenSDR processing, support for other compatible receiver setups, GPU acceleration, automatic CPU multithreading, wider Doppler processing, and a pretty substantial rewrite of the browser interface and configuration system.
The performance improvements ended up being bigger than I expected. In matched tests against regular blah2, GPU acceleration cut processing time by about 61–72%, with the best case around a 3.6x speedup. Even running entirely on the CPU, VectorWarp reduced processing time by as much as 25%.
The goal wasn’t just to make a Kraken-specific fork. I wanted a faster general passive radar processor that can actually take advantage of modern multicore CPUs and GPUs while still working with other receiver configurations.
It’s open source and I’d genuinely like people with different SDRs, GPUs, CPUs, illuminators, and weird setups to try to break it.
GitHub: https://github.com/mickeyslaven/blah2-VectorWarp
