ggwave

Tiny data-over-sound library.

Click on the images below to hear what it sounds like:

Details

This library allows you to communicate small amounts of data between air-gapped devices using sound. It implements a simple FSK-based transmission protocol that can be easily integrated in various projects. The bandwidth rate is between 8-16 bytes/sec depending on the protocol parameters. Error correction codes (ECC) are used to improve demodulation robustness.

This library is used only to generate and analyze the RAW waveforms that are played and captured from your audio devices (speakers, microphones, etc.). You are free to use any audio backend (e.g. PulseAudio, ALSA, etc.) as long as you provide callbacks for queuing and dequeuing audio samples.

Possible applications:

• Serverless, one-to-many broadcast
• Device pairing
• Authorization
• Internet of Things
• Audio QR codes

Try it out

You can easily test the library using the free waver application which is available on the following platforms:

Browser demos

• https://waver.ggerganov.com
• https://ggwave.ggerganov.com

HTTP service

# audible example
curl -sS 'https://ggwave-to-file.ggerganov.com/?m=Hello world!' --output hello.wav

# ultrasound example
curl -sS 'https://ggwave-to-file.ggerganov.com/?m=Hello world!&p=4' --output hello.wav

Technical details

Below is a short summary of the modulation and demodulation algorithm used in ggwave for encoding and decoding data into sound.

Modulation (Tx)

The current approach uses a multi-frequency Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) modulation scheme. The data to be transmitted is first split into 4-bit chunks. At each moment of time, 3 bytes are transmitted using 6 tones - one tone for each 4-bit chunk. The 6 tones are emitted in a 4.5kHz range divided in 96 equally-spaced frequencies:

Freq, [Hz]	Value, [bits]	Freq, [Hz]	Value, [bits]	...	Freq, [Hz]	Value, [bits]
F0 + 00*dF	Chunk 0: 0000	F0 + 16*dF	Chunk 1: 0000	...	F0 + 80*dF	Chunk 5: 0000
F0 + 01*dF	Chunk 0: 0001	F0 + 17*dF	Chunk 1: 0001	...	F0 + 81*dF	Chunk 5: 0001
F0 + 02*dF	Chunk 0: 0010	F0 + 18*dF	Chunk 1: 0010	...	F0 + 82*dF	Chunk 5: 0010
...	...	...	...	...	...	...
F0 + 14*dF	Chunk 0: 1110	F0 + 30*dF	Chunk 1: 1110	...	F0 + 94*dF	Chunk 5: 1110
F0 + 15*dF	Chunk 0: 1111	F0 + 31*dF	Chunk 1: 1111	...	F0 + 95*dF	Chunk 5: 1111

For all protocols: dF = 46.875 Hz. For non-ultrasonic protocols: F0 = 1875.000 Hz. For ultrasonic protocols: F0 = 15000.000 Hz.

The original data is encoded using Reed-Solomon error codes. The number of ECC bytes is determined based on the length of the original data. The encoded data is the one being transmitted.

Demodulation (Rx)

Beginning and ending of the transmission are marked with special sound markers. The receiver listens for these markers and records the in-between sound data. The recorded data is then Fourier transformed to obtain a frequency spectrum. The detected frequencies are decoded back to binary data in the same way they were encoded.

Reed-Solomon decoding is finally performed to obtain the original data.

Examples

The examples folder contains several sample applications of the library:

Example	Description	Backend
ggwave-rx	Very basic receive-only program	SDL
ggwave-cli	Command line tool for sending/receiving data through sound	SDL
ggwave-wasm	WebAssembly module for web applications	SDL
ggwave-to-file	Output a generated waveform to an uncompressed WAV file	-
waver	GUI application for sending/receiving data through sound	SDL
ggwave-py	Python examples	-

Other projects using ggwave or one of its prototypes:

• wave-gui - a GUI for exploring different modulation protocols
• wave-share - WebRTC file sharing with sound signaling

Building

Dependencies for SDL-based examples

[Ubuntu]
$ sudo apt install libsdl2-dev

[Mac OS with brew]
$ brew install sdl2

[MSYS2]
$ pacman -S git cmake make mingw-w64-x86_64-dlfcn mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2

Linux, Mac, Windows (MSYS2)

# build
git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/ggwave --recursive
cd ggwave && mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

# running
./bin/ggwave-cli

Emscripten

git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/ggwave --recursive
cd ggwave
mkdir build && cd build
emcmake cmake ..
make

Python

pip install ggwave

More info: https://pypi.org/project/ggwave/

Installing the Waver application

Linux

sudo snap install waver
sudo snap connect waver:audio-record :audio-record

Mac OS

brew install ggerganov/ggerganov/waver

Todo

• Improve library interface
• Support for non-float32 input and non-int16 output
• Mobile app examples