Airspy Mini (Dongle) 24Mhz – 1800Mhz (6Mhz-spectrum)

Airspy Mini SDR receiver 24Mhz – 1800Mhz (6Mhz spectrumscope)

Airspy Mini builds on top of the successful Airspy R2 architecture to offer a portable high performance scanner for the VHF and UHF bands.

The Airspy Mini leverages our proven low-IF architecture based on Rafael Micro R820T2 and a high quality Oversampling 12bit ADC and state of the art DSP.

In Oversampling Mode, the Airspy Mini applies Analog RF and IF filtering to the signal path and increases the resolution to up to 16-bit using the software decimation. The net result is Spectacular Performance!

The coverage can be extended to the HF bands via the SpyVerter up-converter companion.

This new addition to the Airspy family is 100% compatible with all the existing software including the de facto scanning standard SDR#, but also a number of popular software defined radio applications such as SDR-Radio, HDSDR, GQRX and GNU Radio.

For a more complete list of supported software, check the download page

Typical Applications

• Portable VHF/UHF/SHF Radio Monitoring
• Real Time Spectrum Analyzer
• ADS-B, ATC receiver
• Radio Astronomy
• Satellite IF
• Telemetry Receiver
• Wide Band Scanner
• Education
• Ham Radio, etc.

Supported Software

• The gold standard SDR#
• The ultimate Narrowband Signals Analysis and Decoding Suite Krypto500
• The ultimate Wideband Signals Analysis and Decoding Suite Krypto1000
• The other excellent SDR suite, SDR-Console
• The Suiss-army SDR knife for Linux and Mac, GQRX
• Check the full list of tools in our download page

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10
• Linux
• *BSD
• OSX

Technical specifications

• Continuous 24 – 1700 MHz native RX range, down to DC with the SpyVerter option
• 3.5 dB NF between 42 and 1002 MHz
• Maximum RF input of +10 dBm
• Tracking RF filters
• 35dBm IIP3 RF front end
• 12bit ADC @ 20 MSPS (10.4 ENOB, 70dB SNR, 95dB SFDR)
• 10, 6 and 3 MSPS IQ output – Optimized for portable and tablets
• Up to 6 MHz panoramic spectrum view
• 0.5 ppm high precision, low phase noise clock
• 4.5v software switchable Bias-Tee 100% Compatible with SpyVerter and High Performance LNA
• IQ or Real, 16bit fixed or 32bit float output streams
• No IQ imbalance, DC offset or 1/F noise at the center of the spectrum that plagues all the other SDRs
• Best software support of all existing SDRs
• No drivers required! 100% Plug-and-play on Windows Vista, Seven, 8, 8.1 and 10, all Linux Flavors, Mac and Android
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi, Odroid, Pine64 and UP boards
• Operating temperature: -10°C to 40°C

Minimum hardware requirements

• Core 2 Duo @ 2 GHz CPU or equivalent
• 2GB of RAM (to run your own OS, airspy barely needs 1MB of memory)
• High speed USB 2.0 controller

Developer API

• Open source multi-platform libairspy and airspy host tools at github
• Open source airspy firmware at github
• Linux kernel SDR API (by Antti Palosaari) at github

Firmware Updates

v1.0.0-rc10-6 2020-05-08 (Changelog)

A long wire antenna can cause an electric discharge due to static electricity building up between the PC and the antenna.
It is not recommended to connect these antennas to any SDR directly. An RF isolation transformer is required to prevent the destruction of the RF input of the SDR, the USB port of the SDR, the USB port of the PC, or all of them.
Also, the same thing could happen with a Discone or any other VHF/UHF antenna if it is not grounded to the same GND point as the computer. Keeping the antennas “electrically floating” creates static electricity and you get a discharge when you try connecting the RF input or the USB.
Another important parameter to take into account is the RF leakage to the receiver from a powerful TX. The maximum RF power at the input of SDRs should not exceed +10 dBm. Leaving the antenna connected while transmitting in another antenna a few meters away will create more than +23 dBm and can destroy the RF circuitry. A proper antenna switching mechanism should be installed in case of TX.
If in doubt, ask a specialist or ask in our mailing list: https://airspy.groups.io/g/main/messages