I spent the last week reading a great deal about SDR and researching the current radio market, realized I really missed listening to the radio and figured I better get back to it now while there are still radio stations to listen too. Ended up ordering a Tecsun PL-880 since if I am going to use the computer for this, I might as well just stream. I still might dig into SDR if I end up wanting more than what the Tecsun offers since I have no interest in having a pile of radios or even a large desktop radio.
I am currently learning with this book. It has a very good practical and engineering oriented guide, I would recommend it!<p>Also the mentioned and covered hardware is cheap to get, I am currently using a RTL-SDR from nooelec and for learning the basics you have to invest like 50 euros, which is fair IMO.
RTL-SDR is not for beginners only, it is great cheap every day SDR with known parameters. If you know what you are doing, RTL-SDR solves 90% of your receiving tasks. It is noisy in some frequency range, it has spurious signals, it is only 8 bit, but professionals easily deal with all there things. As you learn more in radio world, RTL-SDR open new opportunities for you and will never die as a receiver. Later you will start writing your software for it to process I/Q samples.
I spent some time reading the later chapters which are what I'm fuzziest on. It's nice to have the python code there. I do overall think this is a good resource. However, the hand-waviness of the specifics gets to me. The author even admits at one point that there was theory behind choosing specific constants that they won't get into. But they don't say how I can figure that out. Did example, if I know my preamble length and maximum frequency offset, how do I choose loop parameters to lock on within the needed time but stay stable? I have no clue. Would've been nice to get pointed in the right direction.
This is an excellent resource. I'm not a DSP expert, but I work in the field, and this is usually the first resource I go to when I need to re-familiarize myself with some basics.
Wow! Thank you!!!