The Front end of Software-Defined Radio: Possibilities and Challenges

Abstract

The use of mobile telephony has shown a spectacular\ud growth in the last 10 years. A side effect of this rapid\ud growth is an excess of mobile system standards. Therefore,\ud the Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) concept is emerging as\ud a potential pragmatic solution: it aims to build flexible radio\ud systems, which are multi-service, multi-standard, multiband,\ud re-configurable and re-programmable, by software.\ud First, this paper presents a global overview of SDR.\ud Furthermore, it discusses several front-end architectures of\ud SDR. The goal of this project is to generate knowledge about\ud designing part of the functionality of SDR, implemented by\ud rapid prototyping strategies. The focus is on the front end\ud of SDR. The technological roadmap is taken into account to\ud evaluate several architectures