SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO

What Is a RADIO????
Wirelessly Transmits Or Receives Signals

 In The Radio Frequency (RF) Part Of The

Electromagnetic Spectrum

 To Facilitate The Transfer Of Information.

Eg- Cell Phones, Computers, Car Door

Openers, Wireless internet cards (WiFi /
802.11), pagers, GPS,
Case-I --- Northern Iraq
US Navy jets mistakenly attacked a Kurdish convoy led by
US Special Operation Forces. Caused by a simple mix-up:
the radios carried by the SOF were compatible only with
USAF aircraft but not with US Navy jets which had
attacked them!
Case II- September 11
 Hundreds of firefighters and police officers rushed into
the World Trade Center. Helicopters circling overhead
noticed the buildings starting to glow and relayed to
incident commanders on the ground that the buildings
may collapse. The police officers were given the order to
evacuate --- all but 80 escaped. The firefighters never got
the word --- 121 of them, most within striking distance
of safety, never got the word
The Problem???
Interoperability
SOLUTION- Software Defined Radio
What is Software Defined Radio??
 "Radio In Which Some Or All Of The Physical Layer
Functions Are Software Defined"
 The Idea Is To Get The Software As Close To The Antenna As
Is Feasible
Why We Need SDR??
 Enables the creation of open APIs for the radio interface and
reduces the number of radio components.

 This is very useful to increase the battery life and make the
seamless operations simpler. Intelligent terminals may benefit
a lot of the multimode features.

 They can be quickly and easily upgraded with enhanced

features.
SDR History
 Increased Attention During Second Part Of 1990-ies

 MMITS Formed By Us Government, For Converging

The Multiple Radio Interfaces And Systems In Defense
Area

 MMITS Changed Name And Scope To SDR Forum

 Standard Architecture (SCA)

Published By Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS)
Joint Program Office (JPO)
 Why We Need SDR??
 They can be reconfigured "on-the-fly". That is, depending on what
you need, your universal communication device would reconfigure
itself appropriately for your environment.
Example:-It could be a cordless phone one minute, a cell phone the
next, a wireless internet gadget the next, and a GPS receiver another.

 Smart radios or cognitive radios can look at the utilization of the RF

spectrum in their immediate neighbourhood, and configure
themselves for best performance

 Software radio makes it feasible to implement many of the

complementary advances in wireless technology that have occurred in
recent years, including smart antennas, adaptive power management,
or new modulation and signal processing techniques.
Present Scenario
The Future
 Applications
 The military has been interested in software radio for some
time, and not surprisingly, some of the first implementations
have been in military applications.

 Telematics (i.e. use of computing and communications in

vehicles) will be one of the earliest commercial applications of
software radio.

 Wireless service operators and equipment manufacturers are

also interested in software radio.

 Software radios hold great promise for wireless consumer

devices because they can facilitate meeting form factor and
convenience goals
Application Military
 Goals:
 – To enable and improve the efficiency of joint operations
(co-operation between separate troops)

 Interoperability (connections between different systems).

 – Implementation of new features and systems without the
need to purchase new equipment.
 – Reduce the number of radios. US armed forces has 25 –
30 radio families in use.
 – Flexible services (adaptive waveforms).
Application Military - Example
 Joint tactical radio systems – JTRS
– US military software radio program.
– Family of common Radios and Waveforms built around a
standard open architecture.
– New radios of US armed forces must fulfill JTRS requirements.
• Radios must be based on SCA-architecture.
SDR Civil Applications
 Next generation multimedia satellites
 Only (economical) way to introduce new services or systems to
orbiting satellites.
 Implementation of 4G-terminals.
 The same terminal or base station can operate in several different
systems.
 Reconfigurable multi-standard terminal for heterogeneous
networks.
 Personal communication devices
 Cellular / Paging / Wireless LAN(s)

 PC based “generic transceiver”

 Radio / TV
 Emerging unlicensed RF band apps
SDR Architecture
 ANTENNA
 ”Intelligent” Or ”Smart”
 Self Adaptation – Tuning To Several Frequency Bands
 Self Alignment – Beam Forming Capability
 Self Healing – Interference Rejection

 RF Front End
 Transmit and Receive at various frequencies
 Convert RF to IF
 Amplifies the Signal
 ADC / DAC
 Continuous to Discrete Conversion
 Properties- SNR, Resolution, Power Dissipation

 Digital Front End

 IF to Baseband
 Down Conversion to make it compatible with DSP
Algorithms and processors

 Signal Processing
 Encoding/Decoding
 Modulation/Demodulation
SDR Classification
Tier 0: Hardware Radio (HR)
 No changes to system can by done by software

Tier 1: Software-Controlled Radio (SCR)

 Control functionality implemented in software,
but change of attributes such as modulation and
frequency band cannot be done without
changing hardware
SDR Classification
Tier 2: Software-Defined Radio (SDR)
 Capable of covering substantial frequency range
and of executing software to provide variety of
modulation techniques, wide-band or narrow-band
operation, communications security functions and
meet waveform performance requirements of
relevant legacy systems
 Capable of storing large number of waveforms or
air interfaces, and of adding new ones by software
download
SDR Classification
 System software should be capable of applying new
or replacement modules for added functionality or
bug fixes without reloading entire set of software

 Separate antenna system followed by some

wideband filtering, amplification, and down
conversion prior to receive A/D-conversion

 The transmission chain provides reverse function

of D/A-conversion, analog up-conversion, filtering
and amplification
SDR Classification
Tier 3: Ideal Software Radio (ISR)
 All of capabilities of software defined radio, but
eliminates analog amplification and heterodyne
mixing prior to A/D-conversion and after D/A
conversion

Tier 4: Ultimate Software Radio (USR)

 Ideal software radio in a chip, requires no external
antenna and has no restrictions on operating
frequency
 Can perform a wide range of adaptive services for
user
Assignment- Explain Cognitive Radio
SCA- Software Communications
Architecture
 The SCA specification establishes an implementation
independent framework with baseline requirements for
the development of software configurable radios.

 These requirements are comprised of interface

specifications, application program interfaces (APIs),
behavioral specifications, and rules.

 The goal of this specification is to ensure the portability

and configurability of the software and hardware and to
ensure interoperability of products developed using the
SCA.
SCA- Software Communications
Architecture
 Bus Layer (Board Support Package):
– The Software Architecture is capable of operating on
commercial bus architectures. Possible buses include
VME, PCI, CompactPCI, Firewire (IEEE-1394), and
Ethernet.

 Network & Serial Interface Services:

– The Software Architecture relies on commercial
components to support multiple unique serial and
network interfaces.

 Possible serial and network physical interfaces include

RS-232, RS-422,RS-423, RS-485, Ethernet, and 802.x.
SCA- Software Communications
Architecture
 Operating System Layer:
– The Software Architecture includes real-time
embedded operating system functions to provide multi-
threaded support for applications. The architecture
requires a standard operating system interface for
operating system services in order to facilitate
portability of applications. Specification defines a
minimal POSIX profile to meet SCA requirements.

 Core Framework:
– The CF is the essential (“core”) set of open
application-layer interfaces and services to provide an
abstraction of the underlying software and hardware
layers for software application designers.
SCA- Software Communications
Architecture
 CORBA Middleware:
– CORBA is used in the CF as the message passing
technique for the distributed processing environment:

 Application Layer:
– Applications perform user communication functions
that include modem-level digital signal processing, link-
level protocol processing, network-level protocol
processing, routing, external (I/O) access, security, and
embedded utilities. Applications are required to use the
CF interfaces and services.