• What does a USB dongle do?

• A dongle is a small USB device that allows you to access the

internet. It can also be referred to as a Wi-
Fi dongle, USB modem, internet stick, USB network adapter
or USB mobile broadband stick. Dongles are popular because
they offer greater flexibility than fixed line connections and can
be used on the go.
• RTL-SDR is a very cheap ~$25 USB dongle that can be used as a
computer based radio scanner for receiving live radio signals in your
area (no internet required). Depending on the particular model it
could receive frequencies from 500 kHz up to 1.75 GHz. Most
software for the RTL-SDR is also community developed, and provided
free of charge.
•  The RTL-SDR is also sometimes referred to as RTL2832U, DVB-T
SDR, DVB-T dongle, RTL dongle, or the "cheap software defined
radio"
• There are now many other software defined radios better than the
RTL-SDR, but they all come at a higher price. Currently we think that
the Airspy ($169) and SDRPlay ($99) SDR's are the best low cost RX
only SDR's. There is also the HackRF ($300USD) which can both
transmit and receive.
 What are some RTL-SDR Radio Scanner Applications?

• The RTL-SDR can be used as a wide band radio scanner. Applications include:
• Use as a police radio scanner.
• Listening to EMS/Ambulance/Fire communications.
• Listening to aircraft traffic control conversations.
• Tracking aircraft positions like a radar with ADSB decoding.
• Decoding aircraft ACARS short messages.
• Scanning trunking radio conversations.
• Decoding unencrypted digital voice transmissions such as P25/DMR/D-STAR.
• Tracking maritime boat positions like a radar with AIS decoding.
• Decoding POCSAG/FLEX pager traffic.
• Decoding POCSAG/FLEX pager traffic.
• Scanning for cordless phones and baby monitors.
• Tracking and receiving meteorological agency launched weather balloon data.
• Tracking your own self launched high altitude balloon for payload recovery.
• Receiving wireless temperature sensors and wireless power meter sensors.
• Listening to VHF amateur radio.
• Decoding ham radio APRS packets.
• Watching analogue broadcast TV.
• Sniffing GSM signals.
• Using rtl-sdr on your Android device as a portable radio scanner.
• Receiving GPS signals and decoding them.
• Using rtl-sdr as a spectrum analyzer.
• Receiving NOAA weather satellite images.
• Listening to satellites and the ISS.
• Radio astronomy.
• Monitoring meteor scatter.
• Listening to FM radio, and decoding RDS information.
• Listening to DAB broadcast radio.
• Listening to and decoding HD-Radio (NRSC5).
• Use rtl-sdr as a panadapter for your traditional hardware radio.
• Decoding taxi mobile data terminal signals.
• Use rtl-sdr as a 
high quality entropy source for random number generation.
• Use rtl-sdr as a noise figure indicator.
• Reverse engineering unknown protocols.
• Triangulating the source of a signal.
• Searching for RF noise sources.
• Listening to amateur radio hams on SSB with LSB/USB modulation.
• Decoding digital amateur radio ham communications such as
CW/PSK/RTTY/SSTV.
• Receiving HF weatherfax.
• Receiving digital radio mondiale shortwave radio (DRM).
• Listening to international shortwave radio.
• Looking for RADAR signals like over the horizon (OTH) radar, and
HAARP signals.
• What is the RTL-SDRs sample rate?
• The maximum sample rate is 3.2 MS/s (mega samples per second).
However, the RTL-SDR is unstable at this rate and may drop samples.
The maximum sample rate that does not drop samples is 2.56 MS/s,
however some people have had luck with 2.8MS/s and 3.2 MS/s
working well on some USB 3.0 ports.
• Dropped samples are okay if you are just visualizing the spectrum, but
will cause problems if you want to demodulate/decode signals.
• What is the RTL-SDR's ADC resolution?
• The native resolution is 8 bits, but the Effective Number of Bits
(ENOB) is estimated at ~7. Decimation in software may raise this
value.
• The input impedance of an electrical network is the measure of
the opposition to current, both static and dynamic, into the
load network that is external to the electrical source. The input
admittance is a measure of the load's propensity to draw
current.
• What is the RTL-SDR input impedance?
• Since these dongles are intended for TV, most dongles will have an input
impedance of approximately 75 Ohms, although it is unlikely to be exactly
75 Ohms over the entire frequency range.
• Remember that the mismatch loss when using 50 Ohm cabling on a 75
Ohm input will be very minimal at less than 0.177 dB.
• The 75 Ohm impedance for the R820T can be checked on the datasheet
which can be downloaded here.

• However, newer dongles that come with SMA connectors will be 50 Ohms.
• What are the minimum PC requirements?
• Generally, at least a dual core processor of some sort will be required
for most general GUI based software defined radio software.
Command line tools and ADS-B decoders may work with less
powerful hardware. Single board PCs like the Raspberry Pi 3, and
Android mobile devices can also run several applications
• Who owns RTL-SDR?
• No person or company owns RTL-SDR and all it's supported software and
hardware in it's entirety. However, it was the combined efforts of Antti Palosaari,
Eric Fry and Osmocom (in particular Steve Markgraf) who first discovered that
certain TV dongles could be used for SDR. Osmocom in particular developed the
first RTL-SDR driver which was released as open source.
• Since then RTL-SDR has become a community based phenomenon. Certain
companies such as us at RTL-SDR Blog have taken it upon ourselves to produce
our own flavor of RTL-SDR dongles that perform better than the standard TV
dongle. But none of it is possible without the wider community development
behind all the free software.
Schematic of a diagram or other representation) symbolic and
simplified.
• Sampling rate or sampling frequency defines the number
of samples per second (or per other unit) taken from a
continuous signal to make a discrete or digital signal. ... For
some types of noise, sampling rates in excess of 48 kHz may
be advantageous. For any higher sampling rates IASA
recommends 96 kHz."
• In audio production, a sample rate (or "sampling rate")
defines how many times per second a sound is sampled.
Technically speaking, it is the frequency of samples used in a 
digital recording.
• 10 Popular Software Defined Radios (SDRs) of 2021
• NESDR Mini 2+ 0.5PPM TCXO RTL-SDR & ADS-B USB Receiver
Set w/ Antenna. ...
• NESDR Nano 2+ Tiny Black RTL-SDR USB Set. ...
• RTL-SDR Blog R820T2 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software
Defined Radio. ...
• Ham It Up v1. ...
• NESDR Nano 3 OTG - Premium Tiny RTL-SDR Bundle. ...
• NESDR SMArt HF Bundle: 100kHz-1.7GHz Software Defined Radio.
 Software-defined radio (SDR)

• is a radio communication system where components that have been

traditionally implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, 
modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by
means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.[1]
 While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities
of digital electronics render practical many processes which were
once only theoretically possible.
• A basic SDR system may consist of a personal computer
 equipped with a sound card, or other analog-to-digital converter
, preceded by some form of RF front end. Significant amounts
of signal processing are handed over to the general-purpose
processor, rather than being done in special-purpose hardware
(electronic circuits). Such a design produces a radio which can
receive and transmit widely different radio protocols (sometimes
referred to as waveforms) based solely on the software used.
• Software radios have significant utility for the military and 
cell phone services, both of which must serve a wide variety of
changing radio protocols in real time. In the long term, software-
defined radios are expected by proponents like the 
Wireless Innovation Forum to become the dominant technology
in radio communications. SDRs, along with 
software defined antennas are the enablers of the 
cognitive radio.
RF front end 

• In a radio receiver circuit, the RF front end is a generic term for

all the circuitry between a receiver's antenna input up to and
including the mixer stage.[1] It consists of all the components in
the receiver that process the signal at the original incoming 
radio frequency (RF), before it is converted to a lower 
intermediate frequency (IF). In microwave and satellite
receivers it is often called the low-noise block downconverter
 (LNB) and is often located at the antenna, so that the signal
from the antenna can be transferred to the rest of the receiver
at the more easily handled intermediate frequency.
• For most superheterodyne architectures, the RF front end consists of: [2]
• A band-pass filter (BPF) to reduce image response. This removes any signals
at the image frequency, which would otherwise interfere with the desired signal.
It also prevents strong out-of-band signals from saturating the input stages.
• An RF amplifier, often called the low-noise amplifier (LNA). Its primary
responsibility is to increase the sensitivity of the receiver by amplifying weak
signals without contaminating them with noise, so that they can stay above the
noise level in succeeding stages. It must have a very low noise figure (NF). The
RF amplifier may not be needed and is often omitted (or switched off) for
frequencies below 30 MHz, where the signal-to-noise ratio is defined by
atmospheric and man-made noise.
• A local oscillator (LO) which generates a radio frequency signal at an offset
from the incoming signal, which is mixed with the incoming signal.
• The mixer, which mixes the incoming signal with the signal from the local
oscillator to convert the signal to the intermediate frequency (IF).
 How RTL-SDR dongles work

• Direct sampling

• If we take the R820T example, omit the tuner chip, and connect our antenna
directly to the A/D converter, then we can receive 4...6 MHz directly, see figure
(c). This way of using the RTL dongle is known as the "direct-sampling" mode.
We're not limited to the 4...6 MHz frequency range, because although the digital
oscillator is on 5 MHz in this example, it is freely programmable: we can receive
any desired 2 MHz wide frequency band. We do have to take into account that
the A/D converter is running at 28.8 MHz, with which frequencies about 14.4
MHz cannot be distinguished from those below 14.4 MHz. So some analog
preselection is needed.
How…..
• Filtering
• The low-pass filters, at the right in the block diagrams, have an
important task. Up to this point the samplerate is 28.8 MS/s
(MegaSamples/second), allowing signals up to 14.4 MHz. But the USB
interface is not fast enough for that; more than about 3 MS/s doesn't
work. Reducing the samplerate is easy: e.g., discard 9 out of every 10
samples, and you're left with just 2.88 MS/s. But if you do that, you get
aliasing. With 2.88 MS/s only frequencies up to 1.44 MHz can be
unambiguously represented. Frequencies below and about 1.44 MHz are
indistinguishable. So one can only safely reduce the samplerate after a
suitable low-pass filter, blocking everything above 1.44 MHz.
10 Popular Software Defined Radios (SDRs) of 2021

• https://blog.bliley.com/10-popular-software-defined-radios-sdr
• 1. HackRF One Software Defined Radio (SDR), ANT500 & SMA
Antenna Adapter Bundle

• And others with ther specification

 Hack rf specification
•  1 MHz to 6 GHz operating frequency
● half-duplex SDR transceiver
● up to 20 million samples per second
● 8-bit quadrature samples (8-bit I and 8-bit Q)
● compatible with GNU Radio, SDR#, and more
● software-configurable RX and TX gain and baseband filter
● software-controlled antenna port power (50 mA at 3.3 V)
● SMA female antenna connector
● SMA female clock input and output for synchronization
● convenient buttons for programming
● internal pin headers for expansion
● Hi-Speed USB 2.0
● USB-powered