Radio Engineering: From Software Radio to Cognitive Radio

Chapter 11Implementation Platforms¹

 

 

 

11.1. Introduction

Software radio (SR) is a concept from the work of Joseph Mitola in 1995 [MIT 95], as explained in Chapter 6, which is the ideal equipment to communicate with any radio standard without changing any physical component, but by only changing the firmware (embedded software). This technology, though it may appear simple at first, does raise several technological difficulties, especially in the contexts of increasing mobility and high throughput. In addition, very flexible hardware architecture is needed to handle the various types of processing to be done. Reconfigurability of an implementation platform is a crucial technological breakthrough for the SR. The platform must adapt to different processing needs in order to handle the requests for changes in the application contexts (here the context related to radio applications).

11.2. Software radio platform

The SR and cognitive radio (CR) are two very promising technologies for developing future mobile radio systems. They can be designed to work together on one device (a terminal or a base station). Thus, the equipment can analyze its environment and adapt its operation, for example, depending on the different wireless networks available. It would be possible for a user to operate his/her terminal anywhere, anytime, and with any standard just by downloading a given reconfiguration file. There is another advantage as well: the SR may accept other communication modes, which ...