Wiki Reference
Limits and roadmap
What SDR Signal Analyzer 0.9.49 — the free app and the paid SDR SA PRO — cannot do, or does with caveats: in one list, so you do not have to hunt through the pages. And what is being worked on next.
The app was built as a measuring instrument, so it states its limits in the window itself: with badges in the trust bar, loss counters and notes next to the fields. This page collects the same things in one place.
Levels and calibration
- Levels from all IQ receivers — HackRF One and RTL-SDR, and in SDR SA PRO also ADALM-Pluto, Fobos SDR and bladeRF 2.0 micro — are shown in dBFS, relative to the ADC full scale, not in calibrated dBm. There is no amplitude calibration for these receivers yet, and the trust bar says so with the “dBFS — UNCAL” badge. Only a tinySA gives calibrated dBm, because the instrument does the measuring. See Scale, auto scale and waterfall.
- Quasi-peak, CISPR-average and CISPR-RMS are a preliminary check of electromagnetic compatibility, not a compliance measurement: the resolution bandwidth is not the one the standard requires, and the app says so. See Detectors.
Measurements
- The free edition has no markers, peak search, occupied bandwidth (OBW) or adjacent channel power (ACPR). SDR SA PRO PRO has them: six trace markers with peak search and deltas, and noise density, band power, OBW and ACPR — in tuned mode only (not in a sweep) and only on traces T1…T4 — see Trace markers and power measurements.
- You can also measure a region without markers by dragging across it: the app shows its frequency limits and its highest and lowest levels.
Receiver
- WFM is mono only. RDS is not decoded.
- Digital voice is not decoded: DMR, dPMR, NXDN, D-STAR, P25, TETRA.
- FPV-video: PAL and NTSC in black and white from 8 MS/s, PAL in colour from 12.5 MS/s. See FPV video.
Recording
- The recording folder cannot be changed: it is
C:\sdrsa-rec. To record at 20 MS/s the drive must sustain 40 MB/s. - Recording is not “lossless” but has no silent losses: if a sample is lost — on USB or on a slow disk — it is counted and marked in the SigMF metadata.
- While a sweep runs, the recording receives no samples. The gap is not hidden: the metadata marks it as a sweep outage. See IQ recording.
Devices
- RTL-SDR: tested with the R820T2 tuner. The R828D tuner (RTL-SDR Blog V4), direct sampling below 28.8 MHz and the antenna supply (bias tee) are implemented but untested on hardware. There is no transmitter.
- tinySA: no audio, no IQ recording and no zero span — the instrument sends finished levels, not signal samples. Tested on a tinySA Ultra; the original tinySA is supported from its documentation and untested on hardware.
- ADALM-Pluto / Pluto+ PRO: receive only, one channel; loss-free over USB up to about 5 MS/s on an idle machine — higher rates give a wider span but a stream with gaps; the band edges are noisier than the middle, because the app does not load the chip's FIR filter yet.
- Fobos SDR PRO: receive only; no HF below 50 MHz (direct sampling) and no external reference; gain stages are step numbers, not dB.
- bladeRF 2.0 micro PRO: receive only, one channel; needs firmware FX3 2.6.0 with FPGA image 0.16.0 or newer.
- The transmitter works with HackRF One only. Its output is unfiltered and carries harmonics. Carrier, two tones, sweep and noise cannot keep up at 20 MS/s — use 8 MS/s or less for them.
- Other receivers are not supported.
System
- Windows 10 version 1809 or later, or Windows 11; x64 only. macOS and Linux are not supported.
- A graphics driver with OpenGL 3.3 is required: without it the spectrum and waterfall are not drawn, and the app explains why. A virtual machine without 3D acceleration may not provide it. See Troubleshooting.
- The interface is in Ukrainian and English.
What comes next
Not yet in SDR SA PRO PRO, but planned:
- amplitude calibration, after which dBFS becomes dBm;
- a neural-network signal classifier;
- coherent channels and cross-channel detection.
Apart from that, some things remain in the receiver (stereo WFM, automatic gain control) and in signal analysis (constellation, EVM). We give no dates: the site and the wiki only show as ready what is already in the app.