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Gerhard Fettweis is a legend, of course. If I had to form a team to create almost anything in
SDR, Gerhard would be on the top of my recruiting list. He and Tim Hentschel share
important insights in the use of CORDIC and novel sample-rate conversion approaches
that have not been this well treated in the literature outside of Europe. This treatment also
bridges the logical flow from RF and ADCs to baseband technologies.
David Lund of HW Communications Ltd, and Bahram Honary of Lancaster University,
introduce baseband processing for SDR with a treatment of implementation alternatives that
includes software tools.
Friedrich Jondral of Karlsruhe University was my doctoral opponent two years ago. This
was a great experience for me. But he’s tough. He makes you work. His chapter on para-
meterization of mobile standards for SDR shows this. It has its roots in the very strong SDR
research program at Karlsruhe that he directs. I also recommend his monograph on Software
Radio for those of you who speak German. The parameterization of standards is a powerful
approach to modularizing software, enhancing its maintainability while promoting effective
software use. Paul Master and Bob Plunkett begin to address some of the issues Jondral
identifies in their chapter on adaptive IC technology. Their approach to Adaptive Computing
Technology seems particularly suited to 3G applications, including multimedia.
Software topics are my personal favorite. The final four chapters address the leading
software implementation issues. The first key question is how to encapsulate and modularize
SDR software. Software radio software may be based on conventional object-oriented analy-
sis, a radio description language (RDL), or a waveform definition language (WDL). John
Chapin, Chief Technical Officer of Vanu, Inc makes the case for their radio description
language. Ed Willink describes the waveform definition language alternative. I would not
bet against either Vanu or Ed. Both chapters warrant careful consideration and each yields
unique insights. Vanu’s team of world-class ‘hackers’ in Cambridge, Mass in the US can
demonstrate a lot of working code for a dozen or so wireless standards. Their chapter is based
on this strong track record. Ed’s WDL approach looks a bit further into the future. But WDL’s
strong open-architecture with high granularity as well as simulation compatibility seems to
give the acquisition community strong control over implementation details that might be
hidden in proprietary libraries in some RDL style implementations. Both offer insights for
SDR software development teams.
What good is SDR software if you can’t download it? Paul Bucknell and Steve Pitchers of
Philips Research Laboratories present the latest thinking about software download. First, they
identify the key download issues: granularity, component connectivity and binding, function-
ality, installation, integration, and version management. They pay appropriately careful
attention to security, complete with contemporary examples.
Klaus Moessner, a colleague of Walter’s at Mobile VCE, goes beyond download to
emphasize protocol stack reconfiguration, with reconfiguration management and network
support issues, including the bootstrap channel in a variety of alternative implementations.
What more can one say? The value of the text is greater than the mere sum of the parts. The
chapters build on each other and the flow that Walter has laid out makes the chapters mutual
support more of a multiplicative than additive effect. Great job, Walter!
Dr. Joseph Mitola III
Consulting Scientist
Software Defined Radio: Enabling Technologiesxviii