The Software Defined Radio Forum has released a report, “Software Defined Radio Technology for Public Safety,” written by the forum's public safety special interest group, which includes public safety personnel, public safety land mobile radio (LMR) vendors, software developers, regulators, commercial cellular companies, academic and government researchers, and contractors supporting federal interoperability programs. It outlines potential benefits of software-defined radio (SDR), as well as critical issues that need to be addressed.

The report notes that most public safety LMR products being developed use SDR technology to support multiple protocols but that the real promise lies in SDR supporting multiband and multiservice radios. Multiband radios potentially include “waveforms” (software that controls radio operating parameters, such as frequency and modulation) that allow reconfiguring as a VHF, UHF or 800 MHz radio, as needed — a big step in addressing the challenges of interoperable communications. Multiservice radios could be reconfigured to operate on LMR, commercial cellular or 802.11 systems, which would help realize a system-of-systems concept and provide greater communications capabilities in a single device than are available today.

Other potential benefits identified in the report include performance enhancement using cognitive capabilities, in which the radio or network operating parameters are modified based on real-time detection of the radio frequency environment — thereby setting the stage for building smart networks that can adjust to dynamic conditions, including interference and channel loading. The report also indicates that SDR technology can reduce life-cycle costs by enabling software functions to be upgraded without wholesale system changes and by facilitating migration to new protocols and standards.

Although SDR technology is reaching the market, the payoff for public safety is not yet a reality, and the report identifies a number of major issues that remain to be addressed, including:

• technical (antennas, front-end processing and security are key challenges);

• economic (better cost models are needed to quantify the cost impact of SDR); and

• standards (existing SDR standards work addresses internal radio software architectures, such as the military's Joint Tactical Radio System, rather than public service interface standards such as P25).

The report analyzes these issues in detail and outlines the steps necessary to address them and to expedite the integration of SDR technology into public safety communications systems.

For more information, visit http://www.sdrforum.org/appr_docs.html, Document 2006-A0001.