read other formats containing RF time series as SigMF
May 30, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

The sigmf library makes it easy to interact with Signal Metadata Format
(SigMF) recordings. This library is compatible with Python 3.7-3.14 and is distributed
freely under the terms GNU Lesser GPL v3 License.
This module follows the SigMF specification html/pdf from the spec repository.
Install
pip install sigmf
# or
conda install sigmf
# or
mamba install sigmf
Read SigMF
import sigmf
# read SigMF recording
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.sigmf-meta")
samples = meta[0:1024] # get first 1024 samples
sample_rate = meta.sample_rate # get sample rate
# read compressed SigMF archives
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.sigmf.gz") # gzip-compressed
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.sigmf.xz") # xz-compressed
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.sigmf.zip") # zip archive
# read other formats containing RF time series as SigMF
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.wav") # WAV
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.cdif") # BLUE / Platinum
meta = sigmf.fromfile("recording.xml") # Signal Hound Spike
Write SigMF
import numpy as np
import sigmf
data = np.array([0.1 + 0.2j, 0.3 + 0.4j], dtype=np.complex64)
meta = sigmf.fromarray(data)
# optional additional metadata
meta.sample_rate = 8000
meta.description = "sample recording"
meta.add_capture(start_index=0, metadata={sigmf.FREQUENCY_KEY: 915e6})
# creates recording.sigmf-data and recording.sigmf-meta
meta.tofile("recording")
# or create compressed archive
meta.tofile("recording.sigmf.gz")
Docs
Please visit our documentation for full API reference and more info.