Role of Reconfigurable Radio in Today Telecommunications: Industry Research Report

Role of Reconfigurable Radio in Today Telecommunications

Published Date: March 2007

Published By: Practel, Inc.

Order Code: R606-55

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Reconfigurable Radio (RR) - Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio (CR) - technologies and open standards are doing for wireless communications what the PC, object-oriented software and operating systems and microelectronics have done for the computer industry: drive down costs, proliferate wireless applications into every aspect of daily life and introduce interoperability on a global scale. The RR technologies have already been embraced by the defense industry and are now set to take off in the commercial marketplace and public safety communications, where the number of players is increasing with each year. It is also possible that the future commercial viability of 3G and 4G and other evolving wireless networks will depend upon capacity enhancing algorithms such as smart antennas and multi-user detection, and that these are prime candidates for implementation by Software Defined Radio and Cognitive Radio. The growth of these technologies will be fueled by open standards. We are now seeing very strong work progressing for both software and hardware.

RR can offer:

Increased flexibility and interoperability of communication systems on the global scale.
Intelligent use and distribution of spectrum.
Upgradeability: ease of both hardware and software technology insertion.
Efficient OA&M capabilities.
By altering the wireless value chain, service providers may play a more pronounced role in offering telecommunications solutions.
Support of interoperability for first responders’ radio.
Advanced networking capabilities.
Uniform communication across commercial, civil, federal and military organizations.

This report addresses marketing and technological issues of reconfigurable radio communication, including SDR and CR. It also stresses the importance of such radios for efficient spectrum utilization. As a practical example and illustration of CR commercial applications, this report also addresses an evolving IEEE 802.22 standard, which the IEEE is planning to approve in 2008.

SDR aims to solve the two most challenging issues facing over-the-air communications today: compatibility and spectrum usage. The base station segment of the software defined radio communications industry requires flexible signal processing capabilities to support many waveform types simultaneously, to host complex, special-purpose waveforms, and detect and cancel interference using digital techniques. As the software radio industry matures, the demand for these base stations will grow as military, civilian, and commercial users take advantage of its increased reliability and capacity. The portable SDR industry, though is still behind, expected to grow and equip first responders and military personnel.

Maybe the most important area of SDR applications is public safety radio. Governments are spending billions of dollars to equip first responders with the most advanced means of communications, and still face the problem of interoperability between various agencies. Even two prevailing standards, P25 and TETRA, still have to deal with such issues as exhaustive spectrum consumption and various frequency bands. SDR is the solution for solving these issues.

We provided the SDR market analysis, supported by our research and included a number of variables. The analysis showed that the majority of the market still belongs to military, and the market is gradually shifting to commercial areas as well. Police, firefighters, and other government agencies will benefit form SDR use in a great degree.

The sufficient part of the report is an analysis of vendor strategies for SDR. The section on vendor strategies looks at relevant segments of the radio hardware industry, as well as the wireless services market, to see how SDR will affect each industry segment.

CR presents a next logical step to advance digital transmission and to effectively utilize expensive spectrum. Intelligence of these devices allows “hearing” spectrum, identifying unused portions and hitless hoping to “free” windows. CR, seems, realizes an old communication dream when transmission spectrum can be reconfigured accordingly to users’ demand at a particular time interval. It is expected that the cost of CR will be offset by rational use of spectrum. Coming from the military arena, the CR technology is progressing to commercial applications. The good example of this is the evolving IEEE 802.22 standard, which is using TV spectrum (that will be released by broadcasters) by effectively utilizing poorly used portions of TV bands.

In the sections of this report dedicated to CR, we analyze technological specifics, architectures and advantages (as well as limitations) of intelligent radio. The market, seems, needs more time to be established, and we do not expect this market prosper in the commercial applications until 2008-2009. This time interval coincides with the IEEE plan to approve the first CR-based standard - IEEE 802.22. This standard, mostly, aimed to communications networks serving large, underutilized by conventional communications means, rural areas. By some analysts’ assessment, this addressable market is huge in the U.S. and other countries; CR networks will be built by utilizing released by TV broadcasters frequencies (when these broadcasters will obey the FCC requirements to release spectrum in connection with migration to digital TV.) We envision the bright future for CR communications, but many technical and regulatory hurdles should be eliminated.

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