RTL-SDR is a very cheap software defined radio that uses a DVB-T TV tuner dongle based on the RTL2832U chipset. With the combined efforts of Antti Palosaari, Eric Fry and Osmocom it was found that the signal I/Q data could be accessed directly, which allowed the DVB-T TV tuner to be converted into a wideband software defined radio via a new software driver.
Essentially, this means that a cheap $20 TV tuner USB dongle with the RTL2832U chip can be used as a computer based radio scanner. This sort of scanner capability would have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars just a few years ago. The RTL-SDR is also often referred to as RTL2832U, DVB-T SDR, RTL dongle or the “$20 Software Defined Radio”. There are many other software defined radios better than the RTL-SDR, but they all come at a higher price. Currently we think that the Airspy ($199) and SDRPlay ($149) SDR’s are the best low cost RX only SDR’s. Then there are the HackRF ($300USD) and BladeRF SDRs ($420 and $650), which can both transmit and receive.
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