A Cross Platform Framework for Software Defined Radio
Date
2007-12
Authors
Brady, Richard
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch
Abstract
Software defined radios (SDRs) implement in software those parts of a radio which have
traditionally been implemented in analogue hardware. We explain the importance of this
definition and introduce reconfigurability and portability as two further goals. Reconfigurabilty
is a property of the SDR platform, which may be a microprocessor, configurable
hardware device, or combination of the two. We demonstrate that the field-programmable
gate array is suficient for the implementation of practical SDR systems. Portability, on the
other hand, is a property of the modulation and demodulation software, also known as waveform
specification software. We evaluate techniques for achieving portability and show that
waveforms can be specified in a generic form suitable for the autogeneration of implementations
targetting both microprocessor- and FPGA-based architectures. The generated code
is in C++ and VHDL respectively, and the tools used include formal models of computation
and the XSLT language.
Description
Thesis (MScEng (Electical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.
Keywords
Theses -- Electrical and electronic engineering, Dissertations -- Electrical and electronic engineering, Software radio