The component framework profile is a UML profile that captures the SCA concepts for waveform components (resource and resource factory) and plaform components (domain manager, device manager, device and service). These component definitions are stereotypes that extend the UML 2.0 component and are further constrained to realize specific interfaces and property types. The profile contains additional SCA component concepts such as configure, query, capacity, characteristic, and executable properties, as well as both uses and provides ports to support component connections.

A modeling tool using the component framework profile can capture waveform and platform components using a PIM and then transform those models into the specific technologies required by the SDR developer. The benefits of modeling tools using such a profile are:

1. Increased quality of the end product by left shifting defect detection from integration phases to analysis and design phases.

2. Productivity increases.

3. Test automation — from the model, the generation of test code that validates conformance of the generated and developed source code. Additionally, all artifacts (models, source code, tests) are kept up to date and in sync with others.

The component framework profile also contains model library packages that capture UML interfaces for radio component PIM definitions. These interfaces relate to the SCA CORBA interfaces (resource, device, device manager, domain manager, etc.) but are expressed as UML interfaces so they can be transformed into other technologies besides CORBA.

The platform-specific technologies specified in the OMG SR specification at this time for the component framework profile are CORBA and XML. The UML interfaces are transformed into CORBA interfaces and the component descriptors are transformed into similar SCA DTDs or in component schema descriptors as defined in the CORBA component model (CCM).

The communication channel profile is a UML profile that captures the concepts of a radio's end-to-end communication data path (i.e., baseband to RF). This extends the concepts currently found in the SCA. The definition of a communication channel aggregates other logical channels (ie., I/O, physical, processing, secure). The channel concept, as shown in Figure 4, is expressed in the profile as an extension of the UML class. Channel types (I/O, physical, processing, secure, etc.) are, therefore, specializations of a UML class. A channel is associated with one or more communication equipment types. Depending on the channel type determines the set of communication equipment that is associated with a channel.

The communication equipment classifier is an extension of the device classifier, which forms the base definition for all software-based radio hardware abstractions. The specializations (antenna, amplifier, audio, converter, filter, processor, serial device, etc.) of the communication equipment add additional attributes and further constrain the type of ports associated with a device.

In addition to the profile, there are radio control facilities defined for managing a radio's communication channel. The radio manager concept is an extension of the SCA domain manager with additional facilities for managing communication channels and state management.

The SR PIM facilities define a set of interfaces that can be used to express component definitions. The facilities are expressed as UML interfaces and are broken into the following categories:

• Common layer facilities — This facility defines the set of interfaces that all components (regardless of any layering) within a radio platform can realize. Examples of these types of interfaces are flow control, protocol data unit (PDU), and stream interfaces.

• Data link layer — These facilities define link layer control (LLC) and media access control (MAC) layer functionality for communication needs.

• IO — These facilities define serial and audio component definitions for communication needs.

• Physical layer — These facilities define the functionality to convert the digitized signal into a propagating RF wave, and conversely, to convert a propagating RF wave into a digitized signal for processing. The facilities also include frequency tuning, filters, interference cancellation, analog/digital conversion, up/downconversion, gain control, synthesizer, and functionality.

The interfaces in the physical layer facilities at this time continue to be a work in progress. Current activities at the OMG and SDR Forum (SDRF) are focused on the definition of smart antenna and digital IF interfaces.

The OMG specification, much like the SCA, defines an application environment profile for embedded, resource-constrained systems, based on a standardized POSIX-based application environment profile (AEP). In addition to this, a lightweight application environment profile (LwAEP) is defined. The LwAEP is constrained version of the AEP and is targeted at environments with limited computing resources. Examples of constrained embedded processors include DSPs, processor cores within FPGAs and microcontrollers.

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