SERENDIP is an acronym for “Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations”, and like SETI@home, SERENDIP searches the radio band for potential signatures of ETI. Although SERENDIP does not analyze data to the same level of detail as the computing power of SETI@home allows, it scans a broader range of frequencies. The data used in SERENDIP are currently taken using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The initial SERENDIP instrument was a 100-channel analog radio spectrometer covering 100 kHz of bandwidth. Subsequent instruments have been significantly more capable, with the number of channels doubling roughly every year. These instruments have been deployed at a large number of telescopes including the NRAO 90m telescope at the Green Bank Observatory and the Arecibo 305m telescope. SERENDIP observations have been conducted at frequencies between 400 MHz and 5 GHz.