Based on the BeagleBone Black Wireless, adding an RTL-SDR dongle, an antenna and a power supply we have set up our very own ADS-B Ground Station for plane tracking.
Below is the BeagleBone Black running without any filters — just the RTL-SDR dongle and antenna.
Please see a video below where we compare the tracking seen on BeagleBone Black with FlightRadar24's observation. In this case we track a plane SAS944, from Chicago to Copenhagen as it passes from Roskilde Fjord → North of Måløv.
By introducing a Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA) together with a 1090 MHz band-pass filter, we can achieve significantly better plane tracking. A bias tee supplies the necessary power to the LNA; the signal then passes through the 1090 filter before reaching the antenna. This combination dramatically reduces out-of-band interference and boosts sensitivity on the ADS-B frequency.
