INVITED
PAPER
Antenna Requirements for
Software Defined and
Cognitive Radios
Specific requirements of wideband antennas for software defined and
cognitive radios are reviewed in this paper; resulting challenges are
discussed and some practical designs are presented.
By Peter S. Hall, Fellow IEEE , Peter Gardner, Senior Member IEEE , and
Antonio Faraone, Senior Member IEEE
ABSTRACT | Antenna requirements for software defined radio
(SDR) and cognitive radio (CR) systems are reviewed and the
resulting challenges are discussed. Both concepts imply
capabilities for operation over very wide bandwidths, of the
order of one decade in some cases. This then becomes the main
challenge for antenna designers. However, as the concepts
evolve, some systems will work over limited bandwidths and
existing or extended bandwidth antennas will be used. In the
Paper the concepts are explained. As bandwidth is a major
concern, the fundamental limits of performance are restated.
For handheld radio antenna bandwidth and efficiency at low
frequencies is the main problem. Both in the terrestrial fixed
infrastructure and in space communication the difficulty of
designing very wideband arrays to give the pattern control
necessary for interference minimization is significant. In
defence applications external handset antennas are seen to
be necessary and extension to very wide bandwidths is also
seen to be challenging. It is concluded that there is steady
progress towards the realization of both SDR and CR, and this is
throwing up very significant antenna challenges.
KEYWORDS | Antennas; cognitive radio; software defined radio
Manuscript received July 29, 2011; revised November 21, 2011;
accepted December 8, 2011. Date of publication March 7, 2012; date of
current version June 14, 2012.
P. S. Hall and P. Gardner are with the School of Electrical Engineering, University of
Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K. (e-mail: p.s.hall@bham.ac.uk;
p.gardner@bham.ac.uk).
A. Faraone is with Motorola Solutions Inc., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33334 USA
(e-mail: antonio.faraone@motorolasolutions.com).
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JPROC.2012.2182969
2262 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 100, No. 7, July 2012
I . INTRODUCTION
Software defined radio, (SDR), and cognitive radio, (CR),
are two new concepts in wireless communications that
will, in the foreseeable future, change the way that radio
systems are designed and operated. These changes will
have significant effects on antenna requirements in a host
of applications from mobile phones to satellite commu-
nications. This paper describes the concept of SDR and
developments in radio frequency (RF) front ends in
Section II, and extracts new antenna challenges. Section III
describes CR and its implications for antennas. Section IV
revises fundamental limits of antennas, as a preface to a
review of current approaches the challenges in the various
applications areas in Section V. Section VI describes
other related topics that may have a bearing on future
developments, before concluding remarks are made in
Section VII.
I I. SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO
Although the concept of software control of radio trans-
ceivers has been around for many decades, the current
thrust in software defined radio was first described by
Mitola [1], in reaction to the orthodoxy of hardware do-
minated radio design, as a system in which the majority of
the functionality is defined by software algorithms. Since
the first description, interest has risen significantly, driven
to some extent by the great promise of low cost and readily
available processing, and there is now significant world-
wide effort to realize it. Software defined radio is seen as an
enabling technology for cognitive radio, which offers much
promise to increase spectrum usage efficiencies to users in a
0018-9219/$31.00 Ó 2012 IEEE
 Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
Fig. 1. Possible SDR architecture.
wide variety of applications, covering commercial, military
and space communications.
Software defined radio does not represent a single
concept, but has several definitions. An overarching one is
given by the Wireless Innovation Forum, [2], as Bradio in
which some, or all, of the physical layer functions are
software defined.[ Others include software based radio,
reconfigurable radio, and flexible architecture radio. The
early concept, [3], of an amplifier followed by an analogue
to digital converter, is used at very low frequencies (VLF)
and is thought provoking rather than readily realizable yet
at microwave frequencies, due to the very large signal
power required to drive current analogue to digital conver-
ters, [4]. However the addition of low noise and high
power amplifiers, results in the architecture of Fig. 1. This
reflects the trend in SDR transceiver design, towards inte-
grating RF front ends and signal processing circuits onto
one chip, which is driven by requirements for small and
low cost transceivers, and is facilitated by the improving
performance of RF circuits on CMOS, as device geometries
reduce in size [5].
There are no clear standards for SDR although possible
specifications have been suggested, [4], Table 1. Of par-
ticular relevance to antenna design is the frequency range,
which approximately covers FM radio broadcast, private
mobile radio, radio microphones, TV broadcast, and the
current mobile phone bands. It may also be appropriate to
include the ISM bands used for WiFi and other applica-
tions. Cognitive radio has also been suggested in the ultra
wideband (UWB) 3 to 10 GHz range, [6], and in the
60 GHz, [7], band. The overall frequency range is over five
octaves, which poses enormous problems for antenna de-
sign, both for handsets and fixed installations. Due to the
constraints of spectrum regulation, SDR and CR may well
operate in much narrower bandwidths as the concepts
evolve, but the underlying challenge is one of bandwidth
extension. This is discussed further in Sections III and IV
in terms of fundamental limits and application constraints,
respectively.
Returning to Fig. 1, wideband amplifiers are now being
produced for SDR and CR, [8], [9]. However, serious
issues remain, such as noise and distortion caused by
Table 1 Possible SDR requirements [4]
wideband interference. The aim is to avoid bulky and
expensive high-Q RF filters, inductors and band selection
switches. However such wideband antennas cannot be in-
corporated into handheld transceivers without reconfigu-
ration and even base stations are likely to have switched
antennas even with more space available. So, reconfigur-
able antennas, with limited instantaneous bandwidth and
switching or tuning will be used, reducing the noise and
distortion problem. The desire to avoid conventional filters
suggests that the real estate necessarily invested in the
antenna is a prime site for the incorporation of additional
filtering to support the on chip transceiver. There are
examples of antennas with filtering properties, such as
patches with filter resonators below the ground plane,
[10], in the feed line and in the patch itself, [11], in UWB
printed monopoles, [12] and in frequency selective surface
beam antennas, [13]. There is generally some added loss,
similar to that experienced in printed circuit filters. The
small space also means that the number of resonators that
can be used is limited. It is likely that for the wide
bandwidths required for SDR, the integrated filters need to
be reconfigurable. In one sense all frequency reconfigur-
able antennas are acting as reconfigurable filters, but due
to the inherently low Q of filters integrated into radiating
structures, filter roll-off rates are low. For example, a
Vivaldi antenna with a switched band select filter is shown
in Fig. 2, [14]. The six bands are selected using PIN diodes
located around the two ring resonators. The other surface
mount components are to isolate the DC switch bias from
the RF operation of the antenna.
As noted earlier, technology limitations and power
consumption issues make full A/D conversion of the RF
output of a broadband antenna impractical in the
immediate future. However, new techniques can bypass
this limitation. For instance, RF sampling receivers could
sample the antenna output at discrete times, quantization
not occurring until after frequency selective down-
conversion, which is achieved by discrete time mixing
[15] or via a FFT in a sampled analogue signal processor
(SASP) [16]. The implication then is a receiver could
consist of an antenna with an integrated sampled analogue
signal processor, an A/D converter and processor. More
work is required to further investigate this possibility. One
of the issues in cognitive radio is the speed at which
spectrum search is performed. Multiple antennas, each
with its own down-converter, could improve search rates.
This could be realized in a single very wideband antenna,
such as a log periodic array, with multiple converters and
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Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
Fig. 2. Vivaldi antenna with integrated switchable band
selection filters.
processors, each located at a point on the feed structure
related to a specific frequency range to give simultaneous
reception in many bands.
Another circuit development that could affect antenna
design is the low-noise polyphase passive mixer with no
front end LNA, [17]. The mixer has a complex RF input
impedance that can be controlled by tuning the IF impe-
dance on the IF port. This raises the possibility of adap-
tively tuning an antenna by software control of analogue
IF circuit elements, without the need for tunable RF ele-
ments, with the instantaneous frequency determined by
the LO and the RF bandwidth set by tunable Q-factor IF.
There is an implication here that the standard 50
in-
terface between the antenna, and tuner unit if used, and
the RF front end needs to be removed. Put another way,
the front end mixer needs to become part of the antenna
tuner unit.
It is clear that filtering and linearity are central issues.
Reconfigurable antennas must be linear and can support
future on-chip transceivers with additional filtering. How-
ever Q factors much higher than those so far achieved must
be achieved. Designers of new circuit concepts need to
make clear the limits of their technology so that system
designers can perform studies showing the value or other-
wise of filtering in the antenna.
III . COGNITIVE RADI O
The existence of many wireless communications applica-
tions, especially in the region of 0.8 to 3 GHz, has in-
creased spectrum use, causing significant spectrum
congestion [18]. This has driven the regulatory agencies
to find new ways to use spectrum resources. There are a
number of dynamic spectral access models possible, such
2264 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 100, No. 7, July 2012
Fig. 3. Cognitive radio architecture [19].
as shared use by underlay methods, as in UWB systems,
overlay as in cognitive radio (CR), or spectrum commons,
as used in industrial, scientific, and medical bands (ISM).
Fig. 3 shows a typical block diagram of a cognitive
radio, [19]. Its evolution is a response to spectrum conges-
tion and seems to be independent of SDR. However SDR is
acknowledged to be one of the key technologies in its
realization. Whilst Fig. 3 implies a single wideband anten-
na, other literature also suggests the use of single multi-
band, [20], and multiple, [21], antennas. In addition to the
frequency agile front end, which could take the form de-
scribed in the previous section, there is a wideband low
noise amplifier in the search stream, followed by the sens-
ing receiver, with coarse and fine sensing.
The only CR standard is IEEE 802.22, wireless rural
area network (WRAN), [22], will operate from 52–
862 MHz. Spectrum sensing takes place during intraframe
and interframe quiet periods, when the transceiver is
switched off. The use of frequency hopping has been sug-
gested in latency critical communications, such as Internet
use. Search of previously used channels is done during
transmission on the next channel, and this implies that
there should be very great isolation between the antennas
for search and communications, possibly between 80 and
100 dB. This is only needed between adjacent channels
which can be up to 8 MHz wide. Although a time multiplex
search and communications protocal implies that common
antennas could be used for search and communications,
the above isolation requirement indicates the use of
physically separated and different antennas. At the user
premises, omnidirectional antennas, such as an inverted
cone, with gain > 0 dBi, possibly located indoors, should
be used for search and a directional one, such as a log
periodic dipole array, for communications to reduce
interference. The base station requires omnidirectional
coverage, since WRAN is a one-to-many communications
network, so that antennas similar to those in a conven-
tional mobile base station antenna, with directivity in the
vertical plane are implied. A significant challenge here is
 Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
to provide such antennas with the very wide bandwidth
required, which also have useful vertical plane directivity
particularly at the low end of the band. The base station
may also incorporate smart antenna technology, which is
discussed later.
In addition to fixed access into rural areas, there are a
number of other applications where the use of cognitive
radio, will bring benefits and each of them have their own
challenges. Mobile phone systems imply the use of handset
sized mobile transceivers. This means that very wideband
antennas must be located within the terminal and, as the
fundamental limits of antennas render this impossible in a
single antenna, reconfigurable antennas will have to be
used. The defense radio area suffers from an overabun-
dance of radio types, and the principles of software defined
radio are expected to bring cost savings. Communication
satellite payloads will also benefit from SDR concepts, in
that remote reconfiguration to new standards will extend
the satellite lifetime.
IV. ANTENNA FUNDAMENTAL
LIMITATIONS
Antenna performance is subject to fundamental limits that
are relevant to the realization of software defined radio in
portable handsets. In particular, the bandwidth and gain of
an antenna are limited by its volume. Chu, [23], gives an
expression for the minimum quality factor Q of an an-
tenna, which shows that as the size relative to wavelength
reduces, so does the bandwidth. Similarly, the gain is
shown by Harrington, [24], to also reduce with size.
This has great significance for antennas for software
defined radio. The Chu bandwidth must cover the radio
frequency range suggested in Table 1. If this range is put
into the Chu expression, the antenna must be much larger
than the size of a handset. Put another way, if a handset size
of 100 mm  50 mm is considered, which represents a
typical smart phone size, then the bandwidth (or frequency
range), at the lowest frequency, is about 11 MHz, a number
that increases with frequency. This implies that the
antenna must be either tunable, or capable of supporting
many modes. Current handsets antennas have several
modes, but certainly not enough to cover SDR bandwidths.
It is now understood that reconfiguration is the most likely
way to design such antennas.
The other implication relates to base station antennas.
Whilst the spacing between diversity and multiple-input–
multiple-output (MIMO) antennas may be several wave-
lengths, smart antennas which are now seen as very
important for both SDR and CR, need antenna spacing of
less than a wavelength. Techniques relating to very wide-
band phased arrays must then be used, as described in
Section IV. As systems develop it is likely that switching
between multiple arrays each having narrower bandwidths
than specified in Table 1 will be necessary, resulting in
larger antenna systems.
V. ANTENNAS FOR APPLICATIONS
A. Antennas for Mobile Communications Handsets
Due to the difficulty in providing sufficient isolation
between search and communications antennas in a hand-
set, the same antennas will have to be used for both func-
tions. The arguments used in cellphone systems for
multiple handset antennas for diversity, interference re-
jection and beamforming, also apply, and may be used for
either search or communications. Probably, the primary
consideration, for handset antennas, is the coverage of the
very wide bandwidth noted earlier. The argument given in
Section III dictates that some form of antenna reconfigu-
ration is necessary. However before reconfiguration is
discussed, it is necessary to examine the development of
handset antennas to date to assess whether they can be
extended to the necessary bandwidths. It may also be the
case that SDR and CR hardware may be developed for
narrower band applications in which existing antennas may
be suitable.
There is no doubt that multiple antenna solutions will
be adopted in cellphones, as the evolution to wider band-
widths take place. However the space demands within a
handset will remain a big challenge and this will drive
designs towards multiple band or reconfigurable antennas.
The development of multiple resonant mode handset an-
tennas has been an important focus of research over the last
ten years due to the need to cover multiple and ever larger
bandwidths used in cellphone systems. The multiband pla-
nar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) has influenced subsequent
design that now implement the volume sharing principle
enabling different portions of the antenna to be excited in
different frequency bands. The folded inverted conformal
antenna (FICA), [25], extends this concept by showing how
each resonant mode uses the whole volume. An instanta-
neous bandwidth exceeding one octave, [26], can thus be
synthesized. These antennas belong to the class of so called
Bchassis antennas,[ where at least one of the antenna re-
sonant modes, and more frequently most of them, rely on
the device chassis, which is mainly its printed circuit board,
(PCB), to provide the electrical counterpoise to the
antenna element. In fact, it would be almost impossible
to achieve the required operating bandwidths in the 800/
900 MHz cellular bands without exciting substantial RF
currents on the chassis, thus taking advantage of the largest
handset dimension to establish the antenna mode. The
extension down to the SDR lower frequency of Table 1 is
clearly not feasible without this concept. It is reconfigu-
ration of this type of antenna that holds the most promise
for SDR and CR handset antennas.
Antenna reconfiguration is normally achieved in a
number of ways. Firstly various parts of the antenna struc-
ture can be selectively switched in or out. Secondly the
antenna can be tuned by inserting variable reactance de-
vices, such as varactor diodes or transistors. Thirdly, the
loading or matching of the antenna can be varied external
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Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
Fig. 4. Chassis antenna with matching circuit [35].
to the antenna. Mechanical switching has also been pro-
posed, [27]. A comprehensive review is given in an accom-
panying paper in this Special Issue on BReconfigurable
Antennas,[ [28], so that only a brief review related to the
needs of SDR and CR is given below.
The following are examples of the use of switches and
varactors in the antenna. The E shaped patch, [29], with
15 switches, can reconfigure from a band covering 9.2–
15.0 GHz to 7.5–10.7 GHz. The bandwidths at each fre-
quency were 48% and 35% respectively. A small monopole
antenna used a switch to reconfigure from 2.4 to 5.8 GHz,
and a varactor for fine tuning at those frequencies, [30]. In
general switching or tuning of contiguous bands over the
bandwidth of Table 1 has not been demonstrated using
these techniques. In addition, placement of devices on the
antenna can result in design complications in terms of
manufacture using reflow soldering, mechanical integrity
and device bias. On the other hand, external control, which
can be located on the printed circuit board, removes these
complications.
External control can take the form of switching or
matching. In [31], external tuning with a multistub tuner
with varactor diodes has been shown to allow antenna
tuning over a 30% bandwidth. Switching between ports in
a PIFA, [32], giving coverage in either the 0.85, 0.9, and
1.8 GHz bands or the 0.9, 1.9, and 2.05 bands has been
demonstrated. Switching ports from open to short circuit,
in the same PIFA, also allowed operation in the 0.85, 0.9,
1.8, and 1.9 GHz bands or 1.8, 1.9, 2.05, and 2.45 bands.
By loading a secondary antenna port, roughly located at the
maximum distance possible on the antenna from the feed
port [33] allowed continuous tuning over nearly two oc-
taves. Wideband tuning has also been shown by using a
PIFA [34], controlled by an antenna interface module
(AIM), both located on a 100  40 mm2 PCB. The AIM
contains MEMS switches, matching circuits and filters,
using surface mount components on microstrip. The
design can cover the current mobile bands from 824 to
2170 MHz in a number of switched modes that optimize
performance. The AIM can also include detectors that
monitor the antenna performance, and can thus compen-
2266 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 100, No. 7, July 2012
Fig. 5. Total efficiency of chassis antenna of Fig. 4, [35]
(blueVefficiency with each band numbered 1 to 17 has matching
circuit with different component values, greenVefficiency with no
matching, blackVmin efficiency required for various applications).
sate for the effect of the users hand on the antenna
performance.
A chassis antenna with a simple coupling element
replacing the conventional PIFA is shown in Fig. 4, [35].
The antenna is not inherently matched below about 1 GHz,
and the figure shows a typical matching circuit attached to
the coupling element, which would be located on the PCB.
Fig. 5 shows the total efficiency when various matching
circuits are used, for a total size of 100  40 mm2 . Each
matching network is of the form shown in Fig. 4, but has
component values chosen appropriately. Efficiency with no
matching and the minimum efficiency for various cell-
phone applications are also shown. Clearly the efficiency,
which is related to the Harrington gain limit, falls off at
lower frequencies. The narrow bandwidth of each antenna-
circuit combination implies that many circuits are needed
to cover the range suggested for software defined radio in
Table 1, and that a 17 way switch or equivalent arrangement
is needed, which will have a significant loss. The technol-
ogy of the antenna interface unit of [34] will be needed. An
alternative approach is the use of a low temperature cofired
ceramic module incorporating the switches and matching
circuits. The authors of [35] have demonstrated this
technology approach for a limited number of bands, [36].
Fig. 6 shows the LTCC layout, for matching from around
700 to 2900 MHz, which has an overall size of 20
15  0:8 mm3 . Loss is the primary concern, together with
the physical size of the matching unit, if this concept is to
be extended to encompass all the bands indicated in Fig. 5.
An alternative approach which might overcome this
problem is to use tuning elements, such as varactor diodes,
to reduce the complexity of the matching unit. The two
port chassis antenna proposed in [37], tunes across a
frequency range from 450 to 2800 MHz, with dual band
operation and a considerably reduced component count.
 Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
Fig. 6. LTCC based matching unit for 5 band chassis antenna [36].
B. Antennas for Public Safety Applications
The challenges faced by the designers of VHF and UHF
public-safety bands, used by first-responders world-wide
with Bwalkie talkie[ type radios, have the same underlying
problems. Considering the mission-critical nature of the
relative wireless communication devices, the use of exter-
nal monopole or whip type antennas is typically required
to achieve reliable communication. Typical spectra used
world-wide include 136–174 MHz at VHF and 380–
520 MHz at UHF, albeit other bands are used in some
countries, such as the 260 MHz band in Japan. Radios
typically need to operate in legacy private infrastructure
systems at a performance level equal or better than the
previous generations in order to guarantee the same or
better coverage. Therefore, the significant performance
degradation allowed to mobile-phone antennas when they
went from external to internal, and then from single to
multiband, are not available for mission-critical radio an-
tennas. Furthermore, performance must be guaranteed in
all channels since many private networks only employ a
handful of them which are typically lumped together
within a few MHz thus occupying a small fraction of the
aforementioned public-safety bands.
The recent push for communication interoperability
across various services, firefighters, police, emergency
medical personnel, has provided the motivation to develop
multiband mission-critical radios and thus the need for the
corresponding antenna technologies. Many designs have
been developed to cover various band combinations includ-
ing VHF, UHF, as well as the so-called 7/800 MHz band
(764–869 MHz). For instance, the newest generation of
Motorola APX7000 radios, feature various multiband
antenna designs which employ multipitch helical antennas
and coupled radiating elements, in conjunction with an
integrated broad-band matching circuit. Similarly, the
Harris Unity and the Thales Liberty radios also feature
multiband antennas, which use wire radiators with mul-
tiband integrated matching circuits.
The current state-of-the-art suggests that it may be
possible to approach the performance of single band an-
tennas in all public-safety bands concurrently. However,
achieving continuous coverage including the spectrum
between the VHF and UHF bands, and between the latter
and the 7/800 MHz band may prove to be impossible
without recurring to reconfiguration of the antenna
elements or the matching circuits.
C. Antennas for Fixed Infrastructure
The requirements and hence the technology of anten-
nas for base stations depends largely on the application
considered. In particular, antennas for outdoor mobile
communications will differ significantly from those used
for both indoor and outdoor wireless local area networks,
in the need for wider bandwidths, very well controlled
patterns and higher power handling. There is much work
in the area of smart antennas for SDR, although little
reference to the type of array elements that would be used
or to what frequency range would be covered.
Outdoor base station antennas for mobile communica-
tions, [38], typically cover bands from around 800 MHz to
2.2 GHz. In many cases, vertical arrays of microstrip
patches or dipoles are used with interleaving of different
frequency arrays used to give required coverage. Polariza-
tion diversity is now typically used. MIMO antenna tech-
niques can enhance capacity of existing systems. In such
systems several conventional arrays can be spaced by
greater than a wavelength. Multiple vertical arrays are also
used in smart base station antennas, but because narrow
beams are generated, array spacing must be less than a
wavelength. Smart antennas have been around for many
years, and have been shown to give significant increases in
cell capacity, but the relatively high cost has meant that
they have not yet been widely deployed.
Smart antennas have been considered for SDR, [39].
Diversity, beamforming gain and/or spatial multiplexing,
will be utilized. In cognitive radio, smart antennas are
important both for spectrum sensing and to help optimize
the exploitation of the sensed resources. In the sensing
process, both spatial and spectrum sensing are important
in establishing the so-called interference temperature
map. During communications, non intrusiveness of the
secondary nodes with the primary nodes and optimization
of the secondary system capacity are required. Many sys-
tem studies have been performed and representative ones
are given in refs [40], [41].
If CR is required to cover the bands indicated in
Table 1, then multiple switched smart antennas could be
used. In principle, the lower band antennas could be scaled
from existing smart antenna designs, but would however
be much larger than conventional base station antennas.
To the authors’ knowledge this has not been described
explicitly in the literature. To cover this bandwidth in a
single smart antenna is a very significant challenge. Few
antennas have the required capability. Examples include
the Vivaldi array, as used recently on the Square Kilometre
Array Design Study, with a bandwidth of 500 MHz to
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Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios
1.5 GHz, [42], or the low profile connected dipole arrays
which have bandwidths approaching 10 to 1 [43].
D. Antennas for Space and Military Applications
SDR is seen as a key concept for future satellite sys-
tems, enabling reconfigurable satellite payloads, terminals
and gateways, and specifically in telecommunications pay-
loads to allow adaptation to new waveforms and to allow
integration into networks with several coexisting stan-
dards, [44]. The use of the very wide bandwidths suggested
for terrestrial applications is not yet considered, but CR
will be limited to switching between existing bands. Spec-
tral sensing will be used. Highly flexible antenna beam
control by the use of digital beamformers, on both the
satellite and the ground, will allow individual beam shap-
ing, upgrading of beamforming strategy, interference re-
duction and integration of beam formation with various
digital signal processing techniques. Programmes such as
Software Radio Technology on Space Segment (ARTES) in
Europe, [45], move systems towards these goals. The
integration of satellite communication resources with ter-
restrial networks is also a future aim. Reference [46] de-
scribes results of a study of a combined satellite IEEE
802.22 or UWB PAN. It indicates difficulties in using CR
on the satellite downlink due to the wide coverage area,
but useful system improvements overall. Also suggested is
the use of narrow beam, low elevation angle satellite
ground terminal antennas to assist in detection of terres-
trial legacy transmitters.
In the military domain, there is much spectrum con-
gestion in the VHF/UHF bands, due to the proliferation of
applications. For example, in the range 225 to 400 MHz,
radios are used for air to air and air to ground communi-
cations, battlefield trunk radio systems, combat net radio,
UHF satcoms and inter and infra- patrol communications,
[47]. Other issues, such as multinational integration and
reduction of interference with other users are pointing to
the use of software defined radio. There is much work
around the world to incorporate SDR and CR concepts into
vehicle and handheld communications equipment, in-
cluding the U.S. Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) [48],
and similar European based programmes [49]. In general,
frequencies across a wider range than show in Table 1 are of
interest and reflect the very wide range of communications
modes that are used. The primary emphasis in such prog-
rams is software and the radio hardware, with little in the
open literature concerning antenna design. A very wide
range of antennas are used in such systems, and there is a
significant challenge in extending bandwidths, particularly
in size limited cases.
VI . RELATED RESEARCH TOPICS
Switching or tuning within an antenna or in an external
circuit can be achieved by means of PIN diodes, GaAs
FETs, MEMs devices, or varactors, [50]. In terms of
2268 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 100, No. 7, July 2012
switching, MEMS devices have the advantage of very low
loss, wide bandwidth and low power consumption, but the
disadvantages are high operating voltage, high cost and
lower reliability than semiconductor devices. GaAs FETs
used in switching mode, with zero drain to source bias
current, have low power consumption but poorer linearity
and higher loss. PIN diodes can achieve low loss at low
cost, but the disadvantage is that in the ON state there is a
forward bias dc current which degrades the overall power
efficiency and device battery life. For tuning, varactor
diodes have the advantage of providing continuous reactive
tuning rather than switching, but suffer from poor
linearity. Ferroelectric variable capacitors have a smaller
tuning range and higher loss than varactors, but better
linearity, power handling and lower DC power needs.
However, switched capacitor blocks in MEMs technology
have been demonstrated. Linearization of non linear front
end components is possible, so it may be possible to extend
such techniques to allow the use of semiconductor based
tuning elements, such as varactors, in antennas.
Broadband matching of antennas based on anti-Foster
negative impedance inverter circuits (NICs) may be
significant for SDR and CR to aid in stretching antenna
bandwidths. NICs have the potential for small size and
power consumption by their realization using microwave
monolithic integrated circuit technology. Foster’s reac-
tance theorem shows that perfect matching of the low
resistance and high reactance of a typical small antenna
can only be achieved with passive matching circuits at a
spot frequency. The tradeoff between the achievable
VSWR and the bandwidth is subject to fundamental limits
established by Fano [51].
Successful practical implementation of the Linvill, [52],
configuration was described in [53], resulting in 20 dB im-
provement in receiver SNR over 20 to 120 MHz. One novel
approach in the microwave region uses a two port antenna,
with a NIC connected to the second port, [54], resulting in a
simulated 10 dB S11 from 1050 to 2300 MHz. However
there are major difficulties. Stability is hard to maintain,
which MMIC realization may ameliorate. Noise, nonlinear-
ity, power handling, and out of band emissions are further
significant challenges. Much further work is needed.
VII. CONCLUS ION
In reviewing the requirements for and the state of the art
in antennas for software defined radio and cognitive radio,
it is evident that there are as yet no clear specifications and
hence the focus of future work will narrow around specific
applications as potential systems emerge. However, it is
clear that the frequency ranges needed will be much wider
than those covered by antennas in most current commu-
nications systems and this implies that frequency recon-
figuration will become increasingly important, as will
smart and multiple antenna techniques both in the base
station and in mobile terminals.
 Hall et al.: Antenna Requirements for Software Defined and Cognitive Radios

The trend to on-chip transceivers suggests that the
integration of filtering into antennas will become impor-
tant, but the wide bandwidths indicate that these filters
must be reconfigurable with the antenna. The large area of
the antenna, relative to circuit components, appears to
offer more scope for filter reconfiguration, but the open
environment results in lower Q factor and hence lower out
of band roll-off. More work is needed to overcome these
limitations.
The choice of device for reconfiguration is still not
clear. Cost, reliability, loss and linearity are traded in the
various contenders. Tradeoffs may be different in different
application, e.g., low-power versus high-power transceiv-
ers. Component count in the tuner unit is also important
and work on the linearization of continuous tuning com-
ponents, such as the varactor, could reduce the count.
Similarly the development of stable and linear NICs could
also contribute. Workers in both the antenna and front end
areas need a better appreciation of the capabilities and
fundamental limitations of technology in other areas. It is
hoped that this paper will contribute an improved under-
standing of system trends to the antenna community, and
also make clear to those outside the area what antennas
can and cannot do. h
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Dr. A. Alexiou,
Prof. K. M. Luk, Dr. P. de Maagt, Prof. C. Christodoulou,
and Dr. A. Shukla for helpful discussions, the U.K. Engi-
neering and Physical Science Research Council for sup-
porting the work at the University of Birmingham, and all
of the members of the Antenna and Applied Electromag-
netics Laboratory.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Peter S. Hall (Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D.
degree in antenna measurements from Sheffield
University, Sheffield. U.K. in 1973.
He spent three years with Marconi Space and
Defense Systems, Stanmore, U.K., and fourteen
with The Royal Military College of Science,
Swindom, U.K., In 1994, he joined The University
of Birmingham, U.K., where he is currently a
Professor of communications engineering, Leader
of the Antennas and Applied Electromagnetics
Laboratory, and Head of the Devices and Systems Research Centre. He has
researched extensively in the areas of antennas, propagation and antenna
measurements. He has published five books, over 350 learned papers and
taken various patents. His publications have earned six awards, including
the 1990 IEE Rayleigh Book Award for the book, Handbook of Microstrip
Antennas. Professor Hall is a past IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He is a
member of the IEEE AP-S Fellow Evaluation Committee. He recently
received the LAPC IET James Roderick James Lifetime Achievement
Award.
Peter Gardner (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.Sc. degree in physics from the University of
Oxford, Oxford, U.K., in 1980, and the M.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the
University of Manchester Institute of Science and
Technology (UMIST), Manchester, U.K., in 1990 and
1992, respectively.
He is currently Reader in Microwave Engineer-
ing at the University of Birmingham. From 1981 to
1987, he was with Ferranti, Poynton, Cheshire, U.K.,
as a Senior Engineer in microwave amplifier development. In 1989, he
joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, UMIST,
as a Research Associate, where he carried out research in microwave
negative resistance circuits, low-noise MMIC design, and tunable planar
resonators. In 1994, he joined the School of Electronic, Electrical, and
Computer Engineering, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, U.K., and is
currently a Reader. His current research interests are in the areas of
microwave and millimetric integrated active antennas, antennas and
transceivers for cognitive radio systems, and transmitter efficiency
enhancement and linearization techniques.
Antonio Faraone (Senior Member, IEEE) was born
in Rome, Italy, in 1966. He received the Ph.D.
degree in applied electromagnetics from the
University of Rome BLa Sapienza,[ in 1997, then
joined the Motorola (now Motorola Solutions Inc.)
Corporate EME Research Laboratory in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, engaging in mobile antenna
technology and RF dosimetry research.
He is a Motorola Scientific Advisory Board
Associates member, Motorola Distinguished Inno-
vator, and. Fellow of the Technical Staff within the Chief Technology
Office. He is actively involved in IEEE and IEC standards related to human
exposure to RF energy and the Convener of the IEC Technical Committee
106 (Methods for the assessment of electric, magnetic and electromag-
netic fields associated with human exposure), Working Group 4.
Dr. Faraone holds 18 patents in antenna technology and has
coauthored 30 refereed journal publications.

2270 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 100, No. 7, July 2012