Radwave Beta: Android RTL-SDR RF Analyzer App with Spectrum Pause and Rewind Features

Radwave Screenshot
Radwave Screenshot

Radwave is a recently released Android App for RTL-SDR dongles. It provides a real time waterfall of the RF spectrum, and it's defining feature is that you can easily zoom, pause and rewind the spectrum at any time. The software is currently in beta, and doesn't demodulate any signals, but the work and ideas behind the spectrum display features is really interesting.

Radwave utilizes RTL-SDR dongles and the RTL2832U driver app to allow people to interactively explore the RF spectrum. You can dynamically zoom in and out in time and frequency, pause, and go back in time - all without losing any samples. If you find something cool, tag it and share with friends.

Radwave core technology is its interactive real-time spectrogram. It shows all the spectrum - utilizing every sample1 - for the entire collection2. Frequencies are aligned over time as you change the RF center frequency3, helping you make sense of what you see.

1 Adjacent non-overlapping DFT windows

2 Up to device limitations

3 Alignment limited by buffer uncertainty

Radwave Intro - We're in Beta!

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Alex

Unavalaible for Russia.
Soft just for USA.

John

Hmmm.. I searched for ‘radwave’ in the Google play store just now, but no sign of it.
It may be getting updated. I’ll try again later.

John

Looks really cool!!
What Android version is required to run this app?

Alex

Nothing in Google Play.

Damon

Alex,
I’ve installed it on my Samsung Galaxy S7 last night. I first searched ‘rtl-sdr’, but it didn’t come up. So when I searched for ‘Radwave’ it popped right up.
I know this is a beta, but I already love this for looking at push to talk and DMR signals.

AMS

It shows as beta for my LG V30. I’m surprised that google thinks that the S8 isn’t compatible since it has the same basic chipset (if you are in North America anyway). I ordered a USB-C to USB-A 3.0 adapter so I’ll be interested in testing this out with my RTL-SDR v3. I had another app that I used with my older Xperia Z2 but it didn’t have the features I needed. DSD+ decoding was promised but never showed up. Hopefully the developer of this app will eventually get DSD decoding operational.