24 MHz to 1.8 GHz, 12 bit
Airspy R2 and Mini
The dongle’s range with four times the span and 12 bit samples, driven with no libairspy, on the desktop or in a browser.
An Airspy R2 samples at 10 MS/s and a Mini at 6, both 12 bit, over the same 24 MHz to 1.8 GHz an RTL-SDR covers. The extra span is the point: a whole DAB block with room either side, a 5 MHz LTE carrier in full, or the business and amateur allocations on a band in one go rather than a slice of them.
WaveShark drives it with its own USB driver, so libairspy is neither installed nor loaded, and the same driver runs in the browser over WebUSB. LNA, mixer and IF gain are set apart, or through the linearity and sensitivity tables, and the bias tee powers a mast head amplifier.
What it reaches
- Everything an RTL-SDR reaches, with more of the band at once
- A DAB ensemble and the stations either side of it
- LTE cells in full on carriers up to 5 MHz wide
- Weak signals beside strong ones, with the 12 bit range
What it will not do
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, 802.15.4 and anything else at 2.4 GHz
- A DVB-T multiplex, which wants a HackRF or a LimeSDR
- Shortwave, which is what the HF+ is for
- Transmitting anything
Setup
On Linux the airspy package brings the udev rules; nothing from it is loaded. The gain table, the three stages and the bias tee are in the radio dialog.
Which radio for which job?
The use cases say what each one is for, from a device survey on a dongle to drone Remote ID on a HackRF.
Read the use cases