ADITYA ENGINEERING COLLEGE

Software Radio
SOFTWARE RADIO
Abstract :
A device which acts like a radio for a minute, a cell phone the next, a wireless internet gadget the
next, and a GPS receiver another is no more quixotic. Software radio is the solution. It is an
important emerging technology in wireless communication services.
Software radio system is a radio communication system which can tune to any frequency band and
receive any modulation across a large frequency spectrum by means of a programmable hardware
which is controlled by software . These cognitive radios can utilize the RF spectrum in their
immediate neighborhood, and configure themselves as required by user. This paper deals with:
Evolution

Necessity
Operating principles
Design and control
Applications of software radio.

This paper briefly describes its salient traits, the software and control designs involved. The
advantages are discussed.
1. Introduction:
Wireless communications have an edge over wired in terms of mobility, flexibility, and
reconfigurability. These
enable many services and expand the
usability of old services, extending our ability to stay connected anywhere and anytime we desire.
The idea behind software radio is that it performs modulation and demodulation with software
instead of hardware circuitry. Ultimately turning hardware problems into software problems . That is
it involves very little hardware which are controlled by software programs. In this way, the major
limitations pertaining to hardware components are eliminated. Thus making it work under all
weather conditions.
It also efficiently deals with spectrum management. It is able to inter operate with different wireless
protocols, incorporate new services and upgrade to innovative standards.
2. Evolution:
One of the first software radios was a U.S. military project named Speakeasy '. The primary goal of
the Speakeasy project was to use programmable processing to emulate more than 10 existing
military radios, operating in frequency bands between 2 and 200 MHz .
From 1992 to 1995 , the goal was to produce a radio for the U.S. Army that could operate from 2
MHz to 2 GHz , and operate with ground force radios, Air Force radios, Naval Radios and satellites .
The project was demonstrated at TF-XXI Advanced War fighting Exercise , and met all these goals.
2. a. Basic design concepts :

The basic arrangement of the radio receiver

used an antenna feeding an amplifier and down-converter feeding an automatic gain control , which
fed an analog to digital converter that was on a computer VME bus with a lot of digital signal
processors .The transmitter had digital to analog converters on the PCI bus feeding an up converter
that led to a power amplifier and antenna.
The very wide frequency range was divided into a few sub-bands with different analog radio
technologies feeding the same analog to digital converters. This has since become a standard design
scheme for wide band software radio s.
The goals were to get a more quickly reconfigurable architecture, in open software architecture,
with cross-channel connectivity. The secondary goals were to make it smaller, weigh less and
cheaper.
2. b. Architecture :
The software architecture identified standard interfaces for different modules of the radio: "radio
frequency control" to manage the analog parts of the radio, "modem control" managed resources
for modulation and demodulation schemes (FM, AM, SSB, QAM, etc), "waveform processing"
modules actually performed the modem functions, "key processing" and "cryptographic processing"
managed the cryptographic functions, a "multimedia" module did voice processing, a "human
interface" provided local or remote controls, there was a "routing" module for network services, and
a "control" module to keep it all straight.
The modules are said to communicate without a central operating system. Instead, they send
messages over the PCI computer bus to each other with a layered protocol.
As a military project, the radio strongly distinguished "red" (unsecured secret data) and "black"
(cryptographically-secured data).
The project was the first known to use FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) for digital
processing of radio data. The time to reprogram these is an issue limiting application of the radio.

2. c. Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS):

The JTRS is a U.S. and allied program to produce radios which provide flexible communications.
Examples of radio terminals which require support include hand-held, vehicular, airborne and
dismounted radios, as well as base-stations.
This goal is achieved through the use of software radio systems based on an internationally
endorsed open Software Communications Architecture (SCA). All functionality and expandability is
built upon the Software Communications Architecture (SCA).
The SCA, despite its military origin, is under evaluation by commercial radio vendors for applicability
in their domains.

2. d. Amateur software radios:

A typical amateur software radio, such as the Flex

Radio SDR-1000 or the homemade design described in the ARRL Handbook (1999), uses a direct
conversion receiver . The conversion is to the audio frequency band, which is sampled by a standard
PC sound card. A fast PC operates custom (usually amateur-written) software as the signal
processor.
Software radio chip
Uses include every common amateur modulation: morse code , single sideband modulation ,
frequency modulation , radio teletype , slow-scan television , and packet radio . Amateurs also
experiment with new modulation methods: for instance, the DREAM open-source project decodes
the COFDM technique used by Digital Radio Mondale .
More recently, the GNU Radio Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) uses a USB 2.0 interface,
a programmable FPGA , and a high-speed set of ADC/DACs, combined with reconfigurable free
software. Its sampling and synthesis bandwidth is a thousand times that of PC sound cards, which
enables an entirely new set of applications.

2. e. Software Defined Radio & RFID Technology:

As well as transmitting audio information, SDR may have value in the emerging field of Radio
Frequency Identification ( RFID ), where devices operate on various frequencies using various
communication protocols. In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Auto-ID Center
sponsored research by Thing Magic Corporation to develop an RFID reader that used SDR. A direct
descendant of this device is now available commercially, and other companies are developing RFID
readers that use SDR.
3. Necessity :

Today where the world is at its full pace every human needs to cope with such speed.
There's always a need for a device which could be a cordless phones one minute, a cell
phone the next, a wireless internet gadget the next, and a GPS receiver another. That is,
depending on what we need, our universal communication device should reconfigure itself
appropriately according to environment. Software radio is one such device which can
reconfigure as required.
There are many places where public safety people from one organization can't talk to
another. The locals can't talk to the emergency crew from the next town because they've
got different kinds of radios. Software radio solves this problem by providing them to talk
and listen to multiple channels at a time.
Smart radios or cognitive radios can look at the utilization of the RF spectrum in their
immediate neighborhood, and configure themselves for best performance.

4. Operating principles:
4. a . Ideal concept :

The ideal
scheme would be to attach an analog
to digital converter to an antenna. A
digital signal processor would read the
converter, and then software would
transform the stream of data from the
converter to any other form. An ideal
transmitter would be similar. A digital
signal processor would generate a
stream of numbers.
Hard wired software radio
These would be sent to a digital to analog
converter connected to a radio
antenna.
4. b. Practical receivers:
Current digital electronics are too slow to
receive typical radio signals that range
from 10 kHz to 2,4 GHz. An ideal
software radio would have to collect
and process samples at twice the

maximum frequency at which it is to

operate. Real software radios solve this
problem by using a mixer and a
reference oscillator to heterodyne the
radio signal to a lower frequency.
The sampling works best if it is at a
simple multiple of the protocol's
symbol rate. Since the distant
transmitter and the receiver are linked
only by the radio, this means that the
sampling speed should somehow adapt
to the distant radio's symbol rate. The
phase information may therefore be
used to adjust the effective sampling
rate, as well.
A good software radio must operate at any sample rate within a wide range of rates, in order to be
compatible with many protocols, so this adaptive control is crucial. It can be implemented either
with a hardware linkage to the converter, or in software.
Any signals above the sampling frequency would "interfere" with the sampling, causing spurious
signals to appear in the data stream at a frequency that's the difference between the signal and the
sampling frequency. For this reason, a low-pass analog electronic filter must precede the digital
conversion step.

Real analog-to-digital converters lack the discrimination to pick up sub-microvolt, nanowatt radio
signals. Therefore a low noise amplifier must precede the conversion step. The amplifier introduces
its own problems. If spurious signals are present, these compete with the desired signals for the
amplifier's power. They introduce distortion in the desired signals, or may block them completely.
The standard solution is to put a filter between the antenna and the amplifier, but this reduces the
radio's flexibility- the whole point of a software radio. Real software radios have two or three analog
"channels" that are switched in and out. These contained matched filters, amplifiers and sometimes
a mixer. .
5. Software radio design :
Software radio alters traditional radio designs in three distinct and complementary ways: it
Moves analog/digital (A/D) conversion as close to the receiving antenna as possible;
Substitutes software for hardware processing;
Facilitates a transition from dedicated to general-purpose hardware. Each of these changes has
important implications for the economics of wireless services.
5. a. A/D conversion closer to antenna:
First, moving the A/D conversion closer to the antenna makes it possible to apply the advances of
digital computing and communication technology sooner in the radio. The superhet receiver circuit
made it possible to build better and cheaper radios because it improved the ability of radios circuits
to tune into different frequencies.
The superhet receiver circuit, which was invented by Edwin Armstrong in 1918, exploits the physics
of RF: when you mix two frequencies together, the output consists of four frequencies the two
original frequencies, the sum of the two frequencies, and the difference between the two
frequencies. In the superhet receiver, an oscillator frequency is tuned to the carrier frequency in
such a way that the difference frequency produced is constant and lower. This Intermediate
Frequency (IF) is then more easily filtered for noise and amplified. Because building and designing
analog filters and amplifiers is expensive, this lowered the cost and improved the performance of
radios.
This is beneficial directly because digital components are less complex and lower cost than analog
components. Additionally, this makes it easier to take advantage of advances in digital signal
processing. These include advanced techniques for encoding information and separating signal from
noise.
5. b. Software, instead of hardware processing:

Second, substituting software for hardware

increases flexibility. This flexibility makes customization easier and helps deliver a degree of futureproofing. That is, replacing software especially if this can be done remotely is faster and lowercost than replacing hardware.

New features and capabilities can be implemented when available or when desired. This
can allow services to be changed more rapidly, or equivalently, time to market is reduced.
Additionally, the reliance on software processing can eliminate redundant hardware chains, as found
in dual-mode phones.
5. c. General-purpose, not specialized hardware:
Third, software radio facilitates the transition from specialized to general-purpose hardware.
Initially, dedicated hardware embodied in Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) may be
replaced by Field Programmable Gate Arrays and Digital Signal Processors which are even more
commodity-like and flexible. Prospectively, there is a hope that general-purpose computing
platforms will be able to support software radios. At any given point in time, a specialized chipset
will typically achieve higher performance than a general-purpose processor. However, once Moore 's
Law drives the general-purpose processor past a performance threshold such that it can perform the
necessary radio functions well enough, the advantages of general-purpose hardware come to the
forefront. These advantages include broader applicability and therefore the scale economies enabled
by larger markets, the ability to perform multiple functions leading to integration and scope
economies, and predictable.

DSPs are optimized to

perform standard digital communication functions very fast and efficiently, and are produced at low
cost in large quantities. Improvements in performance over time. In this sense, Moore 's Law drives
both the feasibility of and benefits from software radio.
The transition to general-purpose hardware also makes it more likely that there will be open
interfaces. That is, general-purpose hardware derives its value from its ability to be combined into
systems for many different purposes. This requires the ability to "mix and match" the hardware with
diverse complementary hardware and software. This, in turn, is facilitated by standardized open
interfaces.
Taken together, these effects prospectively lower costs, lower entry barriers, and expand the range
of services that can be offered and the range of architectures capable of delivering those services.

Therefore, the transition to general-purpose hardware is likely to increase competition in several

ways. First, it expands the range of potential suppliers by adding vendors of general-purpose
hardware. Second, because general-purpose hardware is designed to support multiple applications,
there are more likely to be open interfaces. The increased choice of suppliers and open interfaces
reduce supplier lock-in.

Advantages:
Increased flexibility

Lower cost
Multiplicity of standards
Interface of Multimedia services and new devices.

Applications:
Telematics

Communication Service Provider Infrastructure

Consumer electronics

Conclusion:
Software radio is one of the key enabling technologies for the wireless revolution. It enhances
flexibility and lowers the costs of constructing and operating wireless infrastructure. By enabling
digital conversion closer to the antenna, software radio facilitates the exploitation of new techniques
in wireless communications ranging from smart antennas to adaptive power management to
advanced digital signal processing.
By substituting software for hardware, software radio increases flexibility in the form of enhanced
upgradeability, customizability, and dynamic adaptability. This in turn facilitates the replacement of
dedicated hardware with general-purpose hardware. This lowers entry barriers, facilitates system
unbundling, and increases scale and scope economies.
The long-term effect is likely to be increased competition all along the wireless value chain, from
semiconductors through to wireless service provisioning. S oftware radio is likely to be an important
technology in the years to come .
References:
1. Proakis,John, Digital
Communications , Fourth Edition, McGraw-Hill: New York , 2001
1. http://home.attbi.com/radiowarren/hetbasic.html
2. Baines,Rupert, IEEE Communications Magazine , Vol. 33