W1700K SDR: Turn a Wi-Fi 7 Router Into a 320 Msps Radio

The W1700K SDR project turns a consumer Wi-Fi 7 router into a wideband software-defined radio receiver. Hackaday highlighted the work on October 12, 2026, and the code is published on GitHub by a developer using the handle h0m3us3r. The numbers are what stand out: 14-bit IQ samples at up to 320 Msps, delivered to a Linux host over 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

• Hardware: Gemtek W1700K (HW 1.x) or W1700K2 (HW 2.1) Wi-Fi 7 router.
• Radio: MediaTek MT7996, with an Airoha AN7581 SoC handling the data.
• Capture: 14-bit complex IQ at 40, 80, 160 or 320 Msps.
• Bands: 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, receive only.

How Does the W1700K SDR Work?

A Wi-Fi radio is already a software-defined radio in everything but name. It digitizes a wide slice of spectrum and hands the samples to digital logic. Normally that logic decodes Wi-Fi frames and discards the raw data. This project keeps the raw data.

According to the project README, the MediaTek MT7996 radio captures raw 14-bit IQ and writes it into a 1 GiB ring buffer in the router's memory. The Airoha AN7581 SoC then sends the samples as UDP datagrams over the router's 10 GbE port. On the host, a set of tools receives the stream and shows a live spectrum and waterfall in a web browser, using a 262,144-point FFT at 100 frames per second.

The README also states that the radio runs only the project's own firmware, with no MediaTek code, and that the build downloads no vendor firmware.

W1700K SDR Specifications

These figures come from the README.

• Sample rates: 40, 80, 160 or 320 Msps on every band.
• Tuning ranges on the author's unit: 2.081 to 2.748 GHz, 4.647 to 7.509 GHz and 4.707 to 7.576 GHz.
• Tuning steps: 2.98 Hz on the 2.4 GHz band, and 11.9 to 14.3 Hz elsewhere.
• Retune time: about 1 ms while streaming.
• Analog filter: adjustable from 20 to 320 MHz.
• Gain: automatic, or manual control of LNA and baseband gain.
• License: MIT for the project, with GPL-2.0 for the kernel driver and patches.

For scale, a common hobby receiver captures a few MHz of spectrum at a time. A 320 MHz window is wide enough to watch an entire Wi-Fi band at once, which is why Hackaday notes that you can see Wi-Fi packets in the waterfall display. One README screenshot shows a 2.4 GHz capture at 320 Msps with the stream carrying 9.75 Gbit/s.

This is a very different tool from the ESP32 SDR firmware we covered last week, which works at 2.4 GHz on a low-cost dev board. The two projects share an idea and sit at opposite ends of the bandwidth range.

What Do You Need to Build It?

The requirements are specific, and the README is clear about them.

• Serial access: a 3.3 V USB serial adapter connected to the router's console header.
• Host networking: a 10 GbE network card in the Linux host, cabled to the router's WAN port.
• Build tools: a C and C++ compiler, clang, Python 3.10 or newer and the usual Buildroot prerequisites. The build takes about 10 minutes plus downloads.

Installation replaces the router's stock operating system. The install script backs up the NAND flash first, and a restore script writes the backup back to return the unit to stock firmware. The README advises keeping that backup safe.

Limits Worth Knowing

The firmware is receive only. It keeps the transmit path disabled, which is the responsible design for an experimental radio. The frequency coverage is also fixed by the hardware at 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, and Hackaday points out that people interested in lower frequencies would need an external converter.

Within those limits, this is an impressive piece of reverse engineering, and it shows how much capability sits inside ordinary networking gear. If you enjoy repurposed routers, the NanoPi R28S is a good low-cost board to experiment with. More projects are in our mini computer coverage.

Sources: Hackaday — October 12, 2026; W1700K SDR project on GitHub — accessed October 13, 2026.