Using Domain-Specific Modeling to Develop Software Defined Radio Components and Applications

For the past twenty years, there has been a continuous evolution in electronic communications equipment. The evolution can be described as one of moving the radio functionality from being located in the hardware platform running with proprietary processors and circuitry to being located in firmware running on programmable logic and then to being located in software running on general purpose processors. The driving force behind this evolution has been the need to leverage the inherent greater malleability and configurability of software versus that of hardware. As radio functionality continues to move into software, or looking at it another way, as that software moves “closer to the antenna”, it becomes more commercially viable to maintain, configure, test and reuse communications algorithms and functionality as well as the hardware on which it runs. This evolution is very similar to that of the computer itself with today's PCs running applications, the bulk of which exist as software running on general purpose hardware.