What this radio can prove

Android field kit

Add Aether to the Android home screen from Chrome (menu → Add to Home screen). Plug a USB-OTG cable into an NESDR SMArt, RTL-SDR Blog, or other RTL2832U + R820T2 stick and tap USB SDR. Chrome claims the radio, brings up the tuner, and hops the selected window with live IQ. HDSDR on Windows still owns the stick — record there and import.

Windows + HDSDR

HDSDR holds the USB stick exclusively. Press Start, record RF I/Q (red button) or File → Save RF FFT, then Import HDSDR or drop the file on the sweep. Aether reads the LO from the WAV `auxi` chunk or the default filename (`HDSDR_…_915000kHz_IQ.wav`) and only slices a few thousand IQ samples — multi-gigabyte Windows recordings load. Otherwise type the center in MHz. Live USB needs HDSDR closed and WinUSB via Zadig on Bulk-In Interface 0.

Hardware span

A typical RTL-SDR (RTL2832U + R820T2) tunes about 24 MHz–1.766 GHz. HackRF One reaches ~6 GHz. The live demo models that dongle span. 5G mmWave, 95 GHz active denial, and lasers are outside the aperture — a quiet waterfall is not evidence they are absent.

ICNIRP 2020, used honestly

Public whole-body incident power density: 2 W/m² from 30–400 MHz (adult resonance), f(MHz)/200 from 400–2000 MHz, and 10 W/m² from 2–300 GHz. Occupational limits are 5×. Aether estimates S from received dBm assuming 0 dBi. That number is a compass, not a certificate — antenna factor, mismatch, and near-field geometry are unknown.

Why the stick saturates first

An RTL-SDR clips near 0 dBm. Reaching the public ICNIRP heating limit at 1 GHz with a 0 dBi antenna would require about +15 dBm at the connector. The receiver is already blind by then. Saturation is therefore the practical “this field is strong” alarm. Everyday FM at −30 dBm is still about a million times below the heating limit.

What gets flagged as a DEW watch

• Receiver saturation or front-end overload.
• High-duty pulsed RF that is not ADS-B 1090, IFF 1030, or GSM 217 Hz.
• Strong persistent energy on ISM heating frequencies 433.92 and 915 MHz.
• Non-civilian signatures inside the published 1–10 GHz high-power-microwave window (only the slice below ~1.77 GHz is visible here).

Specific health mechanisms

Established RF injury is thermal: whole-body heat strain (worst per watt near 70–100 MHz), skin and corneal burns at microwave, microwave hearing (Frey) from high-peak pulses, and historical radar cataracts. 95 GHz active denial heats the outer ~0.4 mm of skin to produce pain in seconds. IARC lists RF EMF as Group 2B. Large studies have not shown a causal cancer signal below guidelines. Havana-syndrome pulsed-microwave hypotheses remain unproven in the open literature.

Health claims we will not make

Aether will not diagnose an attack or a disease. Frequency alone is not a weapon. Consumer USB SDR is not a calibrated field probe. Use a proper E-field meter if you need a compliance measurement.