EC4530 Soft Radio

An introduction to soft radios, devices that generate (transmitter) and/or process (receiver) digital communications signals in software and in reconfigurable hardware. The course covers basic radio frequency (RF) design principles, soft radio architectures, analysis of receiver operation, and existing soft radio efforts.

Prerequisite

EC3510 or consent of instructor

Lecture Hours

3

Lab Hours

2

Course Learning Outcomes

·       Understand the technical advantages and disadvantages of soft radio vs. conventional radio in a military environment.

·       Obtain an understanding of soft radio design and its distinction from conventional radio design.

·       Obtain a qualitative and quantitative understanding of the tradeoffs in the use of general purpose digital signal processors (DSPs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

·       Obtain an understanding of the technical challenges of soft radio development for military use.

·       Design software for simple digital radio transceivers.