In the future Ill have a cell phone that will be capable of doing all following.
- Receive AM, FM and all other sorts of radio
- Connect to GSM, CDMA, and any other network technology
- Receive and decode satellite video
- Receive and decode terrestrial TV transmission
- Be my wifi and wimax transceiver
This is all that I can think of now. The point is that your cellphone will become a universal communication device that can handle any communication technology. If some new technology developed, all you need is to upgrade the software, just like we upgrade linux or windows. This is what software defined radio has in store for us.
In SDR the emphasis is on creating a universal hardware for receiving signals, and then do all the processing on a software platform which So if tomorrow a new communication protocol is invented, all you need to do is, upgrade your software.
More than the end user, the immediate benefits of SDR is to a service provider, like your cell phone service provider. He incurrs a huge cost in upgrading all his equipments when a better technology is released. But with this system, he can use a universal transmission system which can be upgraded to handle any technology just by upgrading the software. This will save the serivce provider a lot of money, and also will result in better customer experience.
This is a very interesting topic. I would like to see this come up. (It is like using Power DVD to process Dolby Digital encoded DVD)
But if you are looking at all that functionality – Nokia is introducing N96 – it is a GSM phone with all the features except for for your AM, terrestrial TV transmission and wimax. And it is loaded with 16GB memory and can support additional 8Gb Micro SD….The price tag is scary though…
Comment by JMJ — April 22, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
Yes, technically this is possible, and if you look up the Joint Tactical Radio System in the US, you will see that this is already reality in a good number of military radios.
_However_, I do not believe that people will want to pay the price to enable all these features in mobile handsets. Handsets are consumption products, they need to be cheap and be replaced every other year (or sooner).
For service provides, this is a different story, for them this technology is interesting. However, they need supreme performance to enable 1000s of users. Hence their RF hardware is the limiting factor often.
Comment by MH — April 23, 2008 @ 12:49 am
You can experiment with SDR using simple hardware. Look at this http://www.amqrp.org/kits/softrock40/ . The kit is still available with the author( I have bought one recently). There are several other low cost SDR kits and softwares around. Also you can look at http://www.flex-radio.com for commercial SDR solutions intended for the amateur .
Comment by vu2swx — April 23, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
I forgot to post this interesting link.
http://www.softrockradio.org/SDR_Basics
Comment by vu2swx — April 23, 2008 @ 8:54 pm
Hey, you might also check out this article regarding the fundamental parts of SDR: http://www.dh1tw.de/understanding-the-sdr-concept
Comment by SDR Radio — February 25, 2010 @ 3:54 am