VITA-49 is a standard published by the VMEbus International Trade Association that defines the VITA Radio Transport (VRT) protocol, a packet-based format for transporting digitized IQ data and associated metadata over a network. A VITA-49 stream consists of two packet types:
- Data packets: contain IQ samples.
- Context packets: carry metadata such as center frequency, sample rate, gain, and timestamps.
VITA-49 is widely used in software-defined radio systems to decouple RF hardware from signal processing software.