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Software-defined radio: A brief overview

Article  in  IEEE Potentials · November 2004

DOI: 10.1109/MP.2004.1343223 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 In the past, radio systems were designed
to communicate using one or two wave-
forms. As a result, two groups of people
with different types of traditional radio
were not able to communicate due to
incompatibility problems. For example,
the communication equipment of the
United States’ military branches could
not “talk” to each other. This problem
could be costly in times of war (e.g. the
Air Force could not communicate with
the Army) and during peace (e.g. police
could not communicate with fire fight-
ers). The need
to communicate
with people
Software-defined radio :
using different
a brief overview
types of equipment can only be solved
using software programmable radios
because of its flexible architecture.
Software-defined radio (SDR), also
called software radio (SR), refers to wire-
less communication in which the trans-
mitter modulation is generated or
defined by a computer. The receiver
then also uses a computer to recover the
signal intelligence. SDR is an enabling
technology that is useful in a wide range
of areas within wireless systems. The pri- expensive digital hardware, more
mary goal of SDR is to replace as many
analog components and hardwired digi-
tal VLSI devices of the transceiver as
possible with programmable devices.
These include the air interface, modula-
tion and coding schemes, analog-to-digi-
tal converter (ADC), and digital-to-ana-
log converter (DAC).
What are the benefits of SDR? And
who will enjoy these benefits? Here are
some examples:
• Subscribers—easier international
roaming, improved and more flexible
services
• Mobile network operator —a tool
to increase customer retention and pro-
vide added-value services
• Handset and base-station manufac-
turers—the promise of new scale
economies and increased production
flexibility
Software radio has two major advan-
tages: 1) flexibility and 2) ease of adap- central processing unit (CPU).
tation. Flexibility (being able to switch
channels, change modulation) has
always been valuable to the military. For
instance, SDR can be programmed for
©PHOTODISC/MKC COMPOSITE: MKC
emerging standards. This is an attractive
feature for radio designers faced with
several standards. Virtually any aspect of fact, an ideal software-defined radio is
a program that implements radio func-
tions can be easily changed. Although
virtually obscure a few years ago, the
SDR now figures prominently in plans
14
for third generation (3G) wireless ser-
vices, architecture and products.
Enabling technologies
A number of enabling technologies
have significantly changed the landscape
of software radio techniques. They have
permitted increased reliability and func-
tionality with reduced size, weight and
power. As advances in technology pro-
vide increasingly faster and less Matthew N. O.
of the traditional analog functions
of the radio receiver will be
Cajetan M.
replaced by software or digital
hardware. While the traditional
radio is hardware based, the new digital
and software radios do the vast majority
of the signal processing, including chan-
nel selection, tuning and demodulation,
in the digital domain. The ultimate goal
in radio receiver design is to implement
all receiver functions in software.
(Besides the issue of globalization of soft-
ware radio, the goal is almost achieved.)
These receivers can be used in mobile
cellular, satellite and personal communi-
cations services systems.
As shown in Fig. 1, a SDR consists of
analog-to-digital converter (ADC), digi-
tal-to-analog converter (DAC), antenna
and other modules. In addition, the SDR
may employ a digital signal processor
(DSP) and a general purpose,
For simplicity, this article will
focus on the receiver side of
the SDR.
The analog-to-digital con-
verter (ADC) is an important
component in these radio receivers. In
often considered to be an ADC connect-
ed directly to an antenna. What happens
is that an ADC converts the continuous-
time signals to a discrete-time, binary-
0278-6648/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
coded form. Advances in SDR develop-
ment (such as the physical layer flexibili-
ty of wireless devices) have provided
impetus for ADC performance improve-
ments. Although there are different kinds
of ADCs, their performance can be sum-
marized by a few parameters: signal-to-
noise ratio (SNR), stated resolution (num-
ber of bits per sample), spurious-free
dynamic range, and power dissipation.
Digital signal processors (DSPs) play a
prominent role in SDR. They offer devel-
opment flexibility and are used primarily
for number crunching operations in sig-
nal processing algorithms. Traditionally,
DSP techniques were used for pre-modu-
lation and post-detection functions in
radio receivers. In recent times, DSP tech-
niques have been used extensively for
advanced digital communications trans-
ceiver designs, finding their way into
detection, equalization, demodulation,
frequency synthesis and channel filtering.
The Fourier transform is one of the
most common functions performed by
the DSP. In fact, purely soft-
ware-based spectrum monitor-
ing has been implemented
Sadiku using the Fast Fourier
and Transform (FFT). The FFT
extracts frequency domain
information from a series of
Akujuobi time domain samples to
resolve the signal into a set of frequency
bins. If the system is to operate in real
time (which is usually the case), the data
must be able to get in and out of the
DSP, which can create I/O bottleneck
problems.
DSPs are evolving by being integrat-
ed with microcontrollers, getting net
functions and specialized accelerators.
Programmable DSPs are used for all
functions possible within the current
state of the art. They act as specialized
microcomputers, VSLI devices designed
for implementation of extensive arith-
metic computation and perform digital
signal processing functions through resi-
dent software. Application-specific
Fig. 1 Typical software-defined radio architecture
ADC/DAC DSP Information
processors and field programmable logic
devices are used for those functions,
such as the fast Fourier transform,
which may be too complex for efficient
implementation in today’s general-pur-
pose programmable DSPs.
IEEE POTENTIALS
 Since the SDR itself is an emerging
technology, its prospects are related to
other important emerging technologies
such as smart antennas, networking, soft-
ware, semiconductors, signal processing
and battery technology. Rapid advances
in solid-state integrated circuit (IC) tech-
nology are fueling the growth in com-
mercial wireless communications sys-
tems. These emerging technologies and
advances are making SDR technically
and commercially realistic.
Implementation
The ideal SDR has a set of features
that are not yet attainable in commercial
systems due to limitations in current
technology and cost considerations. To
be specific, the digital signal processing
microprocessors are not fast enough to
implement all radio functions. In spite of
this fact, there has been several SDR
implementations.
One such implementation is the
SPEAKeasy system, which is the suc-
cessful implementation of the SDR for
military use in the US. The application
of SDR to military communications was
conceived in the 1970s. SPEAKeasy
allows general-purpose digital hardware
to communicate over a wide range of
frequencies, modulation techniques,
data encoding methods, cryptographic
types and other communication para-
meters. The SPEAKeasy program is a
multi-phase research and development
program for the next-generation military
radio managed by the Air Force Rome
Laboratory (with several locations
throughout the US). It has a program-
mable digital processing capacity on the
order of one billion 16-bit integer oper-
ations per second and 200 million 32-bit
operations per second.
The efforts on SPEAKeasy have led to
other projects such as SPEAKeasy II, the
airborne communication node (ACN), and
the joint tactical radio system, all spon-
sored by the US Department of Defense.
Similar research efforts have been made in
Europe and Japan. In Europe, the focus
for software radio R&D has been the
third-generation mobile multimedia sys-
tem. The Flexible Integrated Radio
Systems Technology (FIRST) project
examined many aspects of software-
reconfigurable air interface implementa-
tion. In Japan, the Software Radio Study
Group was formed in December 1998 to
promote R&D in software radio. Several
companies and laboratories have devel-
oped prototypes of multimode trans-
ceivers using SDR components.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2004
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In the commercial arena, applications
of SDR can be divided into user termi-
nals and radio base stations. Since the
computational load of SDR is on the
order of billions of operations per sec-
ond, it is extremely challenging to imple-
ment a SDR in a battery-powered termi-
nal. SDR hardware platforms can serve a
range of applications including analog
cellular, personal communication ser-
vices and global positioning systems. In
spite of several challenges (such as
direct digitization and direct digital
downconversion), prototypes from many
research institutions and companies have
been produced. An example is the
SPEAKeasy system mentioned earlier.
Conclusion
Rapidly evolving, this technology is
receiving enormous recognition and gen-
erating widespread interest in the telecom-
munication industry. Over the years, the
radio community has realized that as
more of the basic radio functions are
pushed into software, radio itself can
achieve greater flexibility in that it is capa-
ble to operate in a multiservice environ-
ment without being constrained to a par-
ticular standard. Software-defined radio
(SDR) (or software radio) has made a
transition from obscurity to commercial
usage in less than a decade. SDR has
emerged from military research to become
a cornerstone of third generation strate-
gies for regional and global communica-
tions. Some of the issues that appeared to
be roadblocks to SDR development have
been solved somewhat. One of these is
the ability to normalize air interfaces
across regions of the world. Others arise
due to the laws of physics that limit tech-
nical progress in power dissipation, clock
speeds, dyanmic range and linearity. SDR
has been described as a cornerstone in
the evolution of GSM. In addition, indus-
trial leaders such as Nokia, Toshiba and
Motorola have declared their intent to
migrate from digital radios to software
radios as the technology matures.
The SDR Forum <www.sdrforum.org>
is an international, nonprofit organization
that includes members from academia, the
military, vendors, wireless service
providers, and regulatory bodies. It is
open to all organizations interested in pro-
moting SDR. Together, the members are
addressing critical issues such as software
downloading, hardware and software
model interfaces, and protocols. In the
future, software-defined radio will be the
technology of choice in several wireless
applications such as GSM and AMPS.
Read more about it
• J. Mitola II and Z. Zvonar, Software
Radio Technologies. New York: IEEE
Press, 2001.
• J. Mitola II, Software Radio Archi-
tecture: Object-oriented Approaches to
Wireless System. New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 2000.
• Special issue of IEEE Personal Com-
munication, Aug. 1999.
• Special issue of IEEE Journal on
Selected Areas in Communications, vol.
17, no.4, April 1999.
• Special issue of IEEE Communi-
cations Magazine, Feb. 1999.
About the authors
Matthew N. O. Sadiku is presently a
professor at Prairie View A&M University.
He was a professor at Temple University,
Philadelphia and Florida Atlantic
University, Boca Raton. He is the author of
over one hundred and forty technical
papers and over twenty books including
Elements of Electromagnetics (Oxford, 3rd
ed., 2000) and Numerical Techniques in
Electromagnetics (CRC, 2nd ed. 2001),
Metropolitan Area Networks (CRC Press,
1995), and Fundamentals of Electric
Circuits (McGraw-Hill, 2nd ed., 2004, with
Charles Alexander). Some of his books
have been translated into Korean, Chinese,
Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. His cur-
rent research interests are in the areas of
numerical techniques in electromagnetics
and computer communications networks.
Dr. Akujuobi is the founding
Director of the Center of Excellence for
Communication Systems Technology
Research (CECSTR). He is also one of
the researchers with the NASA Center
for Applied Radiation Research (CARR).
He belongs to many professional orga-
nizations such as IEEE, ISA (Senior
Member), ASEE, SPIE, and Sigma XI,
the Scientific Research Society.
Dr. Akujuobi has over 20 years expe-
rience in engineering education, research
and development. His current research
interests include mixed signal systems,
high-speed (broadband) network access
technologies, all areas of signal and
image processing and communication
systems using such tools as wavelet and
fractal transforms. Dr. Akujuobi has a
National Diploma (OND) in Electrical
and Electronics Engineering, BSEE,
MSEE, MBA and a Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering. He is listed in Who’s Who in
Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in
the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s
Who in American Education and Who’s
Who in Industry & Finance.
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