That USB key are really cheap SDR, Software Defined Radio, solutions as you can buy them for some euros. For that price, we can’t expect exceptionnal performances but it could be interesting to have an idea of the limitation of them.

For that test, I will use SDR Console 3 that can be found here.

Bandwidth

The sampling in that USB Key is done by a chip called RTL2832 that could capture upto 3,2MHz. In practical, what is the best bandwidth to use ?

To answer that question, I put the RF Gain of the other component of that USB Key, the tuner R820T2, at 0dB. Then, I injected a signal of -60dBm @50MHz. Here are the result of what we could see on SDRConsole :