10 years ago, the Communications Engineering Lab (CEL) of KIT, Germany, published an out-of-tree module for GNU Radio: The spectral estimation toolbox (gr-specest). Today, it’s still around and works even with the latest master branch of GNU Radio (3.8-ready!).

In this talk, we shall discuss spectral estimation in general, and show how gr-specest can be used to solve spectral estimation problems. Furthermore, we shall discuss how gr-specest was plugged into the academic operations of the CEL, and how it benefitted undergraduates, the lab, and the community as a whole.