Software Defined Radio

Hurmat Ali Shah Ph.D. Student, MCSL.

Contents
Introduction Difference between SDR and hardware radio SDR Transceiver Operational Areas of SDR Architecture Analysis Technological challenges Research Challenges Conclusion

1. Introduction
SDR is defined as a radio communication system where components that are typically implemented in hardware e.g. filters, modulators/demodulators, amplifiers, are implemented by means of software on a PC or an embedded system. The signal processing tasks are handed over to a General Purpose Processor (GPP) rather than a specified special hardware, hence making it possible to function on widely different radio communications protocols and operate on a wide range of frequencies. Hence SDRs are flexible enough to avoid limit spectrum assumptions when designing a radio which is imposed when designing a hardware based radio

Introduction (continued)
The difference between Software Radio and Software Defined Radio is that in SR, all the communication functions are realized as programs/objects running on a suitable processor while SDR is a practical version of SR SR directly samples the antennas output while SDR samples the received signal after suitable band pass filtering. In SR, support for a new protocols is provided by invoking an object while in SDR a functionality can be added by reconfiguring the SDR

Introduction(contd)
An SDR is implemented in three functional units, the first one front end, digital baseband and the other one is back-end Front end composes of filtering/amplifying, ADC and DAC, which are implemented in hardware. The front-end also consist of digital front end Baseband consists Back-end consist of error correction, encryption and Graphical User Interface

Difference between SDR and hardware radio

SDR is different from reconfigurable-hardware radios that the different frequency support architecture does not need to be implemented on specialized hardware but rather on GPP and the different radio frequencies need to be called as objects as like to calling an object in an object-oriented software definition SDR incorporates re-configurability as is provided by hardware slices, specified for different radio protocols But rather than installing a new hardware slice, an object need to be defined in SDR that specifies the air interface, interference levels, restrained only by the antennas range and ADC/DAC sampling frequency etc

SDR Transceiver

SDR Transceiver (contd)

SDR transceiver differs from typical transceiver in that it can be re-configured via a control bus that provides the processing units with different parameters that describe the desired standard SDR guarantees that the transmission can be changed instantaneously Reconfiguration can be done according to the SDR class.

SDR Transciever(cntd)
Commissioning specifies that the system is configured once as specified by the user Reconfiguration with downtime: re-configuration is done for few times during the product lifetime, for instance when the network infrastructure changes Reconfiguration on a per call basis: reconfiguration is a highly dynamic process and is carried on a per call decision Reconfiguration per time slot: reconfiguration can be done even during transmission

Operational areas of SDR

According to the operational mode, SDR can function as one of the following system Multiband system: supporting more than one frequency band as specified by wireless standards e.g. GSM 900 and GSM 1800 Multi-standard system: supporting more than one standard like GSM, UMTS Multiservice system: providing multiple services like voice and data Multi-channel system: supporting multiple channels for transmission and reception simultaneously

Architecture Analysis
Open ended nature of radio services and technology make it compulsory for SDR to support evolution of new services, software and hardware platforms Functional partitioning, component interfaces, design rules must ensure that the system must support plug and play In this scenario, hardware modules require physical interfaces that are compatible with host hardware platform Software modules require comprehensive but simple interface to software-operating environment