Comparisons of high performance software radios with size, weight, area and power constraints

Software-Defined Radios (SDR), which digitize RF spectrum and perform traditional receiver tasks in software, are becoming increasingly viable as an enabling technology for mobile networks and sensor networks. The concurrent rise in commercially available small form-factor, low-power, x86-based processors creates the possibility of incorporating General Purpose Processor (GPP) software radios into existing sensor networks. The eStadium VIP project is considering the addition of such nodes to sense digitized RF spectrum data in Bobby Dodd football stadium. The flexibility inherent in GPP software radio provides rapid algorithm testing; however, the hardware is often large, heavy, and power intensive. Due to the limited resources and practical considerations in the stadium, the trade-offs between size, weight, area, and power (SWAP) requirements and SDR capabilities must be studied prior to deployment. A performance analysis across four PC form factors, including one suitable for embedded use, running realistic SDR applications is presented. Case studies include FM radio with the BPSK modulated Radio Broadcast Data Service (RBDS), FM analog video, and distributed processing of digital video with QPSK modulation. Such studies provide valuable insight into SDR testbeds.