DVB-T dongles based on the Realtek RTL2832U can be used as a cheap SDR, since the chip allows transferring the raw I/Q samples to the host, which is officially used for DAB/DAB+/FM demodulation. The possibility of this has been discovered by the V4L/DVB kernel developer Antti Palosaari.
From: Antti Palosaari iki.fi>
Subject: SDR FM demodulation
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.drivers.video-input-infrastructure
Date: 2012-02-09 15:01:12 GMT (45 weeks, 9 hours and 10 minutes ago)
Subject: SDR FM demodulation
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.drivers.video-input-infrastructure
Date: 2012-02-09 15:01:12 GMT (45 weeks, 9 hours and 10 minutes ago)
I have taken radio sniffs from FM capable Realtek DVB-T device. Looks
like demodulator ADC samples IF frequency and pass all the sampled data
to the application. Application is then responsible for decoding that.
Device supports DVB-T, FM and DAB. I can guess both FM and DAB are
demodulated by software.
Could someone help to decode it? I tried GNU Radio, but I failed likely
because I didn't have enough knowledge... GNU Radio and Octave or Matlab
are way to go.
I smell very cheap poor man's software radio here :)
regards
Antti
SDR# is probably the best application to start out with.
RTL-SDR and GNU Radio with Realtek Clik here to view.
