Real Time Communication System: FM Signal Transmission from

Radio Station using Matlab, Raspberry Pi and RTLSDR

G Sai Rohit Suryakant
Electronics and Communication Department Electronics and Communication Department
IIIT NAYARAIPUR IIIT NAYARAIPUR
Raipur, Chattisgarh Raipur, Chhattisgarh
ganapathiraju16101@iiitnr.edu.in suryakant16101@iiitnr.edu.in

Aman Kurapa Dr Rajarshi Mahapatra

Electronics and Communication Department Electronics and Communication Department
IIIT NAYARAIPUR IIIT NAYARAIPUR
Raipur, Chattisgarh Raipur, Chattisgarh
aman16101@iiitnr.edu.in rajarshi@iiitnr.edu.in

Abstract— Real time communication system is nothing
but communication without any delays. Minimal Latency
is one of the key points of Real time communication
systems. Real time communication system messages are
not stored between Transmission and Reception. In our
Project, we created our own radio station with the help of
raspberry pi. Raspberry Pi is capable of transmitting a
FM signal in a particular frequency range. These signals
are received by RTLSDR without any delay using the SDR
Sharp software. The Spectrum of RTLSDR is analyzed
using Matlab. The results are discussed in the paper. The
broadcast frequency range of a Raspberry Pi is between 1
MHz and 250 Mhz. So, they may interfere with bands of
Government. So we limited our transmissions to the
standard FM band of 87.5MHz–107.9 MHz. It’s important
to and choose a frequency that’s not already in use, so that
there is no interference with licensed broadcasters
Keywords— Radio Station, FM signal, RTLSDR, Raspberry Pi,
Matlab, SDR sharp
home network (LAN connection) to a remote PC running a
program to process the data back into SDR information such as
SDR Sharp. SDR Sharp is a simple, small visceral and fast PC
based Digital Signal Processing application for Software
Defined Radio.
The RTL2832U can be directly plugged into the Raspberry Pi
and wind up with a very small and portable SDR radio server.
Our microcomputer Raspberry Pi can either be plugged
directly to your router or use Wi-Fi for more flexibility in
placement. We can use the Wi-Fi dongle in the Raspberry Pi’s
USB port or a Wi-Fi gateway interface. Generally the Wi-Fi
gateway needs no drivers to connect to the Raspberry Pi since
it converts Wi-Fi data to Ethernet. Dongle route can be used if
that dongle should is compatible with Raspberry Pi.
I. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. Block Diagram of the implemented System

Introduction
In our implemented communication system, Raspberry Pi
broadcasts. FM signals at a particular frequency and transfers it
to a remote PC. SDR Sharp software installed in remote
computer helps to observe the received signals. The signals are
received using RTlSDR. Raspberry Pi is a micro, cost efficient
computer which is capable of performing almost all the tasks
as our desktop PC does. We have used RTLSDR which is a
low cost software designed radio are programmed and
implemented in software instead of the conventional way of
hardware implementation. Here we used Raspberry Pi as a
Remote Server for RTL2832u SDR. In the RTLSDR, RF front-
end followed by an analog-to-digital converter, which provides
samples to a host computer. All the other processing is done in
software. Here one can make the most of the feature of the
RTL driver for the RTL2832U SDR stick is the TCP server
which allows to send data from the RTL2832U stick across Fig 1: Block Diagram
 B.Hardware originally made to receive and decode the FM/AM/SSB
Raspberry Pi is a Linux-based, single-board computer (costs signals. Antii Palosaari, a V4L/DVB kernel developer,
around 30 dollars) having a 700MHz ARM architecture CPU, discovered that there is a device mode in which raw samples
256MBytes of RAM, two USB ports, and a 10/100 Ethernet can be captured and transferred to a host computer. This
controller which would improve the thinking capacity of the feature enables this device to be used as an inexpensive
people. Like any other computer, the Raspberry Pi also uses an Software-defined radio [3]. GNU Radio contains a lot of signal
operating system and here the operating system is a flavor of processing blocks which is useful to build simulation like
Linux called Raspbian. environment, which in turn can be helpful to implement
wireless communication and real-time communication
On one hand, it keeps the price of the platform low and on the experiments.
other, it makes it more ethically hack able. The operating
system runs from an SD flash card, allowing it to instantly be
switched by swapping cards. Its potential uses are astonishing,
and as yet, not fully researched, but it has already been tested II. EXPERIMENTAL PROTOTYPE
as a multimedia player with pelting capabilities, an internet
browser, a games machine and a hardware development board.
It is meant for people of all ages and skill levels, especially for
educational purposes. The General Purpose Input/Output
(GPIO) expansion board for Raspberry Pi allows any external
peripherals to connect to this device. This board enables
controlling light-emitting diodes (LEDs), servo motors, sensors
and other electronic components. The Raspberry Pi has two
interfaces which will allow us access to control things.

RTL-SDR :
The RTL-SDR is an inexpensive software-defined radio
based on DVB-T TV tuners with RTL2832 chips. The
RTLSDR can also act as a wide band radio scanner. It will
attract the hardware hackers, tinkerers, Ham Radio enthusiasts,
and anyone who is interested in RF. RTLSDR receivers use a
Realtek RTL2832 quadrature sampling detector in combination
with a programmable oscillator (most commonly an Elonics
E4000, Fitipower FC0013, FC0012, FC2580, and R820T).
Fig 2: Experimental Setup of our project
Experiments indicate that these devices perform fairly well
without any hardware modification, and the software (drivers, We have interfaced the raspberry pi with the pc after dumping
firmware, and user interfaces) is sophisticated. It was initially the script file of transmitting signal. This will be received by
possible to tune a desired frequency, sample a chunk of the RTLSDR tuned at the same frequency. Then the spectrum
spectrum, and write the data to a file readable by a will be analyzed.
conventional SDR program. For example, GNU Radio or
HDSDR would be used to read the file and demodulate signals
in a 2 MHz wide band of recorded spectrum. Recent
generations of RTLSDR compatible software can directly
access the data stream providing excellent realtime multimode
reception .
RTLSDR hardware consists of USB, PCI and antennas .The
USB dongle used here is based on the Realtek RTL2832U
chip, which is an ADC and USB data pump. Figure 1 shows
the RTL-SDR USB dongle. The Elonics E4000 is the cheaper
and most desirable tuner which is capable of tuning in the
range of 60MHz to 1700MHz. RTL2832U chip is used with
one among the three tuners chips: FC0012 - Tuner 50MHz to
1000MHz; FC0013 - Tuner 50MHz to 1700MHz; R820TTuner
24MHz to 1850MHz. The tuner selects a frequency band
around a target center frequency and demodulates it to the
baseband. In this experiment, the RTL2832U chip serves as an
analog to digital converter that samples the baseband signal Fig 3: Raspberry pi with antenna at GPIO 4
and outputs the samples to a host computer through a
WiredLocal Area Network connection .This dongle was Here we have used a female to male jumper wire as our
Antenna .We can also solder this wire with an antenna for
better efficiency of transmitting. Transmitting with and
without antenna has a lot of difference. With antenna we can
broadcast FM signal over a long range compared to that
without the antenna.

Basically the GPIO 4 can be used to transmit the FM signal.

The transmitted signals are received by RTLSDR and can be
seen using SDR sharp software installed in your PC. We can
analyze the reception in the presence and absence of antenna.

Fig 6: Block Diagram of the RTLSDR receiver using Matlab

Fig 4: Received signal by RTLSDR at 96.5MHZ in presence

of antenna.

The above waveform generally shows the received signal in Fig 7: Spectrum analyzer gives the spectrum similar to that of
the presence of jumper wire used as antenna. Clearly the peak SDR Sharp but using Matlab.
can be obtained at 96.5MHZ where the RTLSDR is tuned and
the red line indicates that.

Fig 8: Clearly shows that there is no time delay in

Fig 5: Received signal in absence of antenna used
communication
Without the use of antenna, only the concentrated signal can Using the above graphs, Real time communication is verified
be visible. The red spectrum around the96.5 MHZ indicates it. using RTLSDR and Raspberry Pi.
 USRP”, International Journal on Telecommunication Systems,
CONCLUSION Springer, Sep. 2013
RTL-SDR along with Raspberry Pi can be used for reception [4] Sruthi M B, Gandhiraj R, Soman K P, ”Realization of
of all signals within the bandwidth of spectrum of RTL-SDR. Wireless Communication System in SDR using GNU Radio”,
Here, we have se nded the FM signal through Raspberry Pi International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer
and RTL-SDR with MATLAB Simulink to receive that signal. Science and Software Engineering (IJARCSSE) , vol. 3 Issue
A Satellite Receiver Station can be constructed with RTL- 6, June 2013
SDR, Raspberry Pi and few other cheap parts. So, that the
[5] Shravan Sriram, Gunturi Srivasta, Gandhiraj R and Soman
satellite signals can be received and decoded in an inexpensive
K P. , “Plugins for GNU Radio Companion”, International
way. Also it can be used for cheap Automatic Identification
Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 52, issue 16, pp. 11-16
System (AIS) ship tracking, and to hack the live DVD Aug. 2012.
broadcast. In AIS ship tracking, a radio scanner or the cheap
RTL-SDR can be used to receive these signals, and with the [6] “AB9IL.net”, http://www.ab9il.net/software-defined-
help of decoding software, ship positions can be plotted on a radio/rtl2832sdr.html, Accessed on May 2013
map. Other than that by using the combination of Raspberry pi
and RTL SDR, the airplane data and weather data can be
received. The ADS-B, an acronym for Automatic Dependent
Surveillance-Broadcast technology allows tracking aircrafts
using high speed radio transmissions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
All the group members would like to acknowledge the ECE
Lab and IIIT-NR for providing the necessary resources and
facilities to implement the project successfully.We thank Dr
Rajarshi Mahapatra for encouraging us to do the project.

REFERENCES

[1] Matt Richardson and Shawn Wallace, Getting Started with

Raspberry Pi, United States of America:O’Reilly Media, 2012
[2] RTL-SDR Installation Instructions: inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/
ee123/fa12/rtlsdr.html, Accessed on May 2013
[3] Gandhiraj.R, Soman.K.P., “Modern Analog and Digital
Communication Systems development using GNU Radio with