Professor might have solved SDR

Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Lynnette Luna

Using open-source software makes price right for public safety

Charles Bostian, a professor at Virginia Tech University in Blackburn, Va., is leading a team in developing software-defined radios, or SDRs, based on an open-source software platform, which could bring about an SDR-enabled handset in 2008 at a $500 price tag — significantly below the $38,000 estimated for military-grade SDRs.

Public safety has been clamoring for SDR and cognitive radio capabilities, especially in light of radio incompatibility issues during major man-made and natural disasters such as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and the devastating Hurricane Katrina last year (MRT, March 2004, page 76; MRT, November 2005, page 40). Grants from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are funding Bostian's work, which aims to support the onslaught of first responders who arrive at the scene of a natural disaster with radios that sport their own frequencies, waveforms and wireless standards.

“We are developing a public-safety cognitive radio,” Bostian said. “The first responder will turn the radio on, scan commonly used public-safety bands and tell the operator what networks it sees. The operator in principle can click on one of those and configure it properly, and a cognitive engine is capable of recognizing those waveforms and configuring [the radio] to transmit and receive the correct waveform.”

Cognitive radio takes an SDR and adds what Bostian calls a cognitive engine that combines artificial intelligence and SDR technology to create a transceiver that is aware of its RF environment, its own capabilities, policies that define legal operation and its user's needs and operating privileges. The Virginia Tech team has developed a proprietary engine based on genetic algorithms developed for an earlier NSF disaster communications project. The algorithms incorporate logic, readiness and adaptive memory.