Software-defined radio
“A software-defined radio (SDR) 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.”
from SDR Forum, “SDR Market Study: The Cognitive Radio Market"
SDR is a powerful and cost worthy solution if:
- standards are quickly changing or are uncertain
- spectrum use is demanding and needs to be flexible
- software needs to run on multiple hardware platforms
- a hardware platform needs to run on various software
- software modules need to be changed over the air
- cost, complexity, weight and power must all be reduced.