Enrique,

That was a good basic article. The author didn't cover much on real communication techniques to deal with noise but he did introduce the hobby of digital packet hacking.

I used to play around with amateur cryptoanalysis and found it annoying to find good puzzles to work on. At work, we had programmed some old portable Kaypro computers to monitor and test our citywide radio packets (police and fire) and I took the idea from there. Instead I hooked up a zero-crossing detector (article called this a "data splicer") from my radio scanner audio output to my 386 Dos home computer (remember those?) parallel printer port and would write routines to analyze other protocols in use. Some people like jigsaw puzzles... I liked digital packet puzzles... something about finding information amidst the chaos is appealing. :)

I had to give it up when I went to grad school and hadn't played around with it since. I don't yet have a strategy for spread spectrum and that seems to be where everything migrated while I was away at school. Bummer. :)

-Jay C. Box