Daniel Estévez
@destevez.net
630 followers 65 following 280 posts
Everything space & RF. Amateur radio operator (EA4GPZ / M0HXM). PhD in Mathematics from Univ. Autónoma de Madrid. he/him
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destevez.net
Would you like to work in RF signal processing at Muon Space
for SIGINT and RF science missions with a team of great engineers including myself? If you are eligible to work on ITAR/EAR and interested in helping us grow our cloud-based and onboard processing, my DMs are open.
RF Digital Signal Processing Specialist - Geospatial Intelligence
Mountain View, CA or Remote
job-boards.greenhouse.io
Reposted by Daniel Estévez
hforsten.com
Synthetic aperture radar vs Gopro.
destevez.net
When setup timing is violated, typically the output delay becomes much larger than the nominal one, increasingly more as the data transition approaches the clock edge. This goes somewhat against the usual idea that setup violations mainly cause metastability.

Read more: destevez.net/2025/09/flip...
A simulation of a setup timing violation. A data transition from zero to one is done increasingly close to the clock rising edge. We can see the corresponding outputs in traces of different colours. As the data transition approaches the clock edge, the output delay increases a lot, until the new data is no longer captured.
destevez.net
Using ngspice, the timing properties of the flip-flop can be measured. Here is an output delay simulation, where the output for different process corners is shown in different colours.
A simulation of output delay. Two clock cycles are simulated, and the data input first is one and then is zero, so we can see how the input data propagates to the output after the clock rising edge. Different process corners are shown with different colours in the flip-flop output voltage trace, so we can see the difference between the fastest and slowest corners.
destevez.net
New blog post: Flip-flop timing experiments. I design an ASIC flip-flop using Magic and play around with some ngspice timing simulations of output delay, setup and hold. I have made my flip-flop (top) as small as possible, so it is half the area as the standard cell (bottom).
Two ASIC cells. The one on the top, which is the flip-flop I have designed is half as tall as the one on the bottom, which is the equivalent cell from the standard library. My flip-flop is also slightly narrower. There is a large difference between the transistor size in both cells, and also the amount of room available to route all the signals. The standard cell can route everything in one metal layer, while my flip-flop needs three metal layers.
destevez.net
Everything is working fine, except that with sawtooth ramps the overshoot is too large (~100 MHz), which could be fixed by a loop filter redesign, and the fast lock mode seems to make the loop unstable (I don't know exactly why this happens).

Read more: destevez.net/2025/09/10-g...
10 GHz FMCW radar LO board – Daniel Estévez
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destevez.net
New blog post: 10 GHz FMCW radar LO board. I've finished assembling and testing my ADF4158+HMC391 3.9-4.45 GHz LO board, for which I asked for reviews a few months ago. In the post I explain some aspects of the board design, and the software I've written and testing I've done.
A photo of an assembled PCB. It is a small board with an SMA connector, a few surface mount chips, a pin header, and tiny 0402 passives.
destevez.net
I study the Normalized Burn Ratio that measures burn severity, and three different vegetation indices that measure vegetation density and health. With these I obtain some conclusions about the damage caused by the fire.

Read more: destevez.net/2025/08/mult...
Multispectral analysis of the Tres Cantos wildfire with Sentinel-2 data – Daniel Estévez
destevez.net
destevez.net
In this post I dive into the 13 spectral bands captured by Sentinel-2 and explain how they can be used to measure vegetation health and fire affectance. This image shows SWIR in red, highlighting burnt areas, NIR in green, highlighting vegetation, and visible green in blue.
A false colour image that shows short wave infrared in red, near infrared in green and visible green in blue. Vegetation looks green or bright green, depending on density. The burnt area looks red, except for some surviving vegetation which can still be seen in green.
destevez.net
New blog post: Multispectral analysis of the Tres Cantos wildfire with Sentinel-2 data. This image shows vegetation surviving the fire in green, vegetation lost by the fire in magenta, and areas affected by the fire but with less vegetation loss (dry grass) in blue.
A false colour image that shows vegetation surviving the fire in green, vegetation lost by the fire in magenta and burnt areas of low vegetation in blue. In green we can see the parks in Tres Cantos, and the creeks and forests highlighted. In magenta we see a large part of the Monte de Viñuelas woodland, which has been burnt severely, as well as some creeks badly affected by the fire. In blue there are areas of dry grass pastures that have burnt, mostly outside of Monte de Viñuelas and northeast of Tres Cantos. There are spotty blue-green areas in the eastern part of Monte de Viñuelas, showing partial fire affectation with trees surviving.
destevez.net
There is now Sentinel-2 imagery for today that has no clouds and has data products that can be downloaded for free. This shows a comparison between 2025-08-10 and 2025-08-13.
destevez.net
Which was the company? (If you can and want to say) Probably I know it.
destevez.net
The above image was supposed to be an animated GIF comparing before and after the fire, but it looks like that doesn't work on Bluesky. Here are the two images.
A satellite image on a cloudless day a few days before the fire. It is shown for comparison. A satellite image of the day after the fire. There are some clouds, but most of the burnt area can be seen through a break in the clouds.
destevez.net
On Monday there was a large wildfire in Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain, which is where I live (my family, friends and I are all okay). Today I have found some Airbus Space Pléiades Neo imagery that shows the extent of the fire more accurately than all other source I've seen.
An animated GIF that toggles between two satellite images of the same area. One was taken on a cloudless day some days before the fire. The other one is from the day after the fire. There are some clouds, but most of the burnt area can be seen through a break in the clouds.
destevez.net
URE sells a book which is specific for the exam in Spain tienda.ure.es/libros/39-li... FEDI-EA has exam models www.fediea.org/examen/exerc...
destevez.net
I've made new releases of gr-satellites: 5.8.0 (GNU Radio 3.10), 4.15.0 (GNU Radio 3.9), 3.22.0 (GNU Radio 3.8). This will be the last release supporting GNU Radio 3.9 and 3.8. Maintainance for these branches will stop now.
The changelog of the release:

Added

    Added callsign to deframer options
    Basic support for SigMF input
    CSP Address Filter block
    CSP ZMQ blocks
    Frame counter block
    Mobitex-NX deframer
    Support for JINJUSAT-1B
    Support for Hex20 Nila
    Support for NUSHSAT-1
    Support for TEVEL2 satellites
    Telemetry decoder for TUBiX20 (TUBIN)
    Time-dependent delay block
    Time synchronization tag to Doppler correction block
    U482C encoder block
    Uplink argument to tle_to_doppler_file.py example

Fixed

    Callsign '-' handling in Check AX.25 Address
    Packet size bug in AX100 deframer
    pybind11 bug in swap_header
    Timezone handling in PDU to KISS

Changed

    Added callsign in SatYAML to BEESAT-1,-9, TUBIN, NanoFF-A,-B, and TechnoSat
    Improved version printout in gr_satellites CLI app
    Updated AX.25 packet radio examples
    Use GNU Radio crc_check in GNU Radio >= 3.10
destevez.net
The datasets are available in Zenodo, and I will do detailed analysis in the future.

Read more: destevez.net/2025/07/n78-...
n78 band 5G NR recordings – Daniel Estévez
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destevez.net
This has been done in collaboration with friends at the Gaia lab, ANTS research group, University of Murcia. We used higher-end USRPs to record large bandwidth. In the post I explain some challenges we found, such as IF interference in a USRP X400 and record to disk performance.
destevez.net
New blog post: n78 band 5G NR recordings. I comment on some recordings I have made that are representative of the current state of 5G deployment on this band in Spain (100 MHz cells for Movistar and Orange, 90 MHz cell for Vodafone).
An inspectrum waterfall that shows a 100 MHz 5G cell that is rather busy. We can see 7 SSB repetitions, and mostly empty uplink slots, since this is a TDD band.
Reposted by Daniel Estévez
hforsten.com
Wrote code for SAR image antenna pattern normalization and polarimetric calibration (channel imbalance and crosstalk). Image looks very nice now.
Uncalibrated SAR image Same image after antenna pattern normalization and polarimetric calibration.
destevez.net
Some months ago I shared my design of a PCB with an ADF4158 PLL/waveform synth and HMC319 VCO intended as an LO source for an FMCW radar in the 10 GHz band. I have finished soldering all the components, and the HMC319 appears to be working. The next step is the ADF4158 config.
A photo of a small PCB with an SMA connector connected to an attenuator, two leads to supply power, a green LED, and a bunch of surface mount components, including three QFN chips. A screenshot of GQRX showing a signal at 3.786 GHz with significant phase noise. This is the output of the VCO without the PLL being configured.
destevez.net
The docs don't say whether a receiver may/must use the chain ID without authenticating it via the DSM-KROOT. This is important, because it affects transitioning seamlessly to the new chain, but doing this incorrectly can have security implications.

Read more: destevez.net/2025/07/gali...
Galileo OSNMA chain renewal – Daniel Estévez
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destevez.net
I have recorded navigation data for a few days around this test, and I use my galileo-osnma Rust implementation to process and analyze this data. I comment on a few tricky points that are not too clear in the Galileo documentation.