The RTL2832U is the Realtek demodulator and USB-bridge chip at the core of
RTL-SDR dongles. Its undocumented raw-IQ
output mode is what turned cheap DVB-T tuners into software-defined radios.1
The RTL2832U is the demodulator/ADC chip at the heart of RTL-SDR dongles, streaming IQ over USB.
Overview
The RTL2832U contains the ADC and USB
interface; it is paired with a separate tuner chip such as the
R820T2 that handles RF front-end and mixing.
Relevance to SDR
GopherTrunk drives RTL2832U-based devices through a pure-Go USB driver with no C
dependencies.
Sources
RTL-SDR — Wikipedia, on the RTL2832U demodulator/USB-bridge chip and its raw-IQ output mode. ↩
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