Provided by: rtl-sdr_0.5.3-13_amd64 
NAME
rtl_power: - wideband spectrum monitor utility
DESCRIPTION
Uses a re-purposed DVB-T receiver as a software defined radio to receive signals in I/Q data form.
Written for and incorporated in the osmocom rtl-sdr project.
USAGE
rtl_power, a simple FFT logger for RTL2832 based DVB-T receivers
This tool gathers signal data over a very wide area of the frequency spectrum, and then that data can be
used to find active areas of the spectrum.
Use: rtl_power -f freq_range [-options] [filename]
-f lower:upper:bin_size [Hz]
(bin size is a maximum, smaller more convenient bins
will be used.
valid range 1Hz - 2.8MHz)
[-i integration_interval (default: 10 seconds)]
(buggy if a full sweep takes longer than the interval)
[-1 enables single-shot mode (default: off)] [-e exit_timer (default: off/0)] [-d device_index
(default: 0)] [-g tuner_gain (default: automatic)] [-p ppm_error (default: 0)] filename (a '-'
dumps samples to stdout)
(omitting the filename also uses stdout)
Experimental options:
[-w window (default: rectangle)]
(hamming, blackman, blackman-harris, hann-poisson, bartlett, youssef)
[-c crop_percent (default: 0%, recommended: 20%-50%)]
(discards data at the edges, 100% discards everything) (has no effect for bins larger than 1MHz)
[-F fir_size (default: disabled)]
(enables low-leakage downsample filter,
fir_size can be 0 or 9.
0 has bad roll off,
try with '-c 50%')
[-P enables peak hold (default: off)] [-D enable direct sampling (default: off)] [-O enable offset
tuning (default: off)]
CSV FFT output columns:
date, time, Hz low, Hz high, Hz step, samples, dbm, dbm, ...
EXAMPLES
rtl_power -f 88M:108M:125k fm_stations.csv
(creates 160 bins across the FM band,
individual stations should be visible)
rtl_power -f 100M:1G:1M -i 5m -1 survey.csv
(a five minute low res scan of nearly everything)
rtl_power -f ... -i 15m -1 log.csv
(integrate for 15 minutes and exit afterwards)
rtl_power -f ... -e 1h | gzip > log.csv.gz
(collect data for one hour and compress it on the fly)
Convert CSV to a waterfall graphic with:
http://kmkeen.com/tmp/heatmap.py.txt
rtl_power, a simple FFT logger for RTL2832 based DVB-T receivers
Use: rtl_power -f freq_range [-options] [filename]
-f lower:upper:bin_size [Hz]
(bin size is a maximum, smaller more convenient bins
will be used.
valid range 1Hz - 2.8MHz)
[-i integration_interval (default: 10 seconds)]
(buggy if a full sweep takes longer than the interval)
[-1 enables single-shot mode (default: off)] [-e exit_timer (default: off/0)] [-d device_index
(default: 0)] [-g tuner_gain (default: automatic)] [-p ppm_error (default: 0)] filename (a '-'
dumps samples to stdout)
(omitting the filename also uses stdout)
Experimental options:
[-w window (default: rectangle)]
(hamming, blackman, blackman-harris, hann-poisson, bartlett, youssef)
[-c crop_percent (default: 0%, recommended: 20%-50%)]
(discards data at the edges, 100% discards everything) (has no effect for bins larger than 1MHz)
[-F fir_size (default: disabled)]
(enables low-leakage downsample filter,
fir_size can be 0 or 9.
0 has bad roll off,
try with '-c 50%')
[-P enables peak hold (default: off)] [-D enable direct sampling (default: off)] [-O enable offset
tuning (default: off)]
CSV FFT output columns:
date, time, Hz low, Hz high, Hz step, samples, dbm, dbm, ...
rtl_power -f 88M:108M:125k fm_stations.csv
(creates 160 bins across the FM band,
individual stations should be visible)
rtl_power -f 100M:1G:1M -i 5m -1 survey.csv
(a five minute low res scan of nearly everything)
rtl_power -f ... -i 15m -1 log.csv
(integrate for 15 minutes and exit afterwards)
rtl_power -f ... -e 1h | gzip > log.csv.gz
(collect data for one hour and compress it on the fly)
Convert CSV to a waterfall graphic with:
http://kmkeen.com/tmp/heatmap.py.txt
SEE ALSO
RTL-SDR wiki documentation: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr Other rtl-sdr programs: rtl_adsb(1), rtl_eeprom(1), rtl_fm(1), rtl_sdr(1), rtl_tcp(1), rtl_test(1)
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Maitland Bottoms for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2013 A. Maitland Bottoms <bottoms@debian.org> This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.