At the recent SDR Forum technical conference, Texas Instruments Inc. released a small form factor software-defined radio (SDR) development platform for military, public safety and other professional radio (PMR) and land mobile radio (LMR) applications. Developed in collaboration with Xilinx Inc. and other third parties, it provides the entire signal chain hardware from antenna to baseband as well as a software package that supports a complete suite of software development tools in a single integrated development platform. With this kit, developers can easily design waveforms as well as create and test single or multiprotocol radios for applications mentioned above, according to TI. Additionally, as the platform is integrated to work with Simulink model-based design tool, developers have the option to use C/HDL or MATLAB Simulink to quickly test proof-of-concept designs and then optimize the architecture for cost and power.

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Next-generation radios require a software-defined architecture that supports multiple protocols while providing standardized hardware that can implement a broad range of systems from simple baseband to complex wideband radios. For example, a radio for military applications, such as a soldier's radio, may need to support multiple waveforms as it is supplied to different groups within the military. In public safety applications, multiprotocol radios need to be able to support various emergency bands including police and fire bands.

Unlike other SDR development offerings in the market, the SDR development platform is a hardware/software co-development environment that supplies the full signal chain for a multiprotocol software- defined radio, including RF front-end module, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion (ADC and DAC) module and digital-processing module. By separating out the baseband, IF and RF as distinct modules rather than as a single fixed architecture, developers are able to extend their radio development capabilities, as well as optimize for cost and power consumption, by substituting their own or third-party modules.

As part of the development platform, TI has brought together several industry leaders to provide the necessary software components and tools to enable rapid SDR development. Lyrtech developed the hardware for the platform and integrated all of the software components of the kit. Relying upon its expertise in developing DSP+FPGA architectures, Lyrtech will also provide custom support for this SDR development platform. While Green Hills' Integrity real-time operating system is running on the ARM to provide the ideal environment for implementing higher layers of radio protocols, the Objective Interface System (OIS) is supplying the Object Request Broker (ORB) middleware for the ARM9, the DSP and FPGA for the SCA version of the platform. The ORB middleware substantially reduces development complexity and enables algorithm code portability. The Communications Research Centre of Canada (CRC) supplies the software communications architecture (SCA) core framework, as per version 2.2, that enables flexible implementation of different waveforms and protocols. Full reference design specs, as well as a complete bill of materials (BOM), will be available to developers.

“SDR is an emerging technology that has been historically constrained by its inherent complex signal-processing requirements. With the SDR development platform, developers can harness the performance and efficiency of TI's TMS320DM644x device to overcome those traditional barriers,” said Ram Sathappan, SDR marketing manager at TI. “Through this development kit, TI is making a strong commitment to the SDR market by providing a robust silicon, hardware and software roadmap that will drive down cost and power consumption.”

Because of the inherent mobility requirements of wireless radios, power consumption is an important factor that is a key challenge in creating an efficient and cost-effective radio design. The SDR development platform is the only development tool in the SDR segment to include the power measurement API that enables developers to track real-world power consumption of the digital baseband unit precisely while algorithm functions are being executed. Traditional power measurement techniques require external measurement of power consumption that offers rough estimates at best, but this development kit will include five different API functions to measure power consumption for all the different elements of the kit. The power measurement API gives developers more visibility into their systems, enabling them to measure currents drawn from individual components such as the DSP and the FPGA. This enables developers to extract important information such as burst and peak power for a specific data rate, enabling them to accurately isolate components as well as accurately estimate battery life. Additionally, developers are able to achieve the optimal power balance while maximizing performance between the different SDR components.

For more information, visit www.ti.com/sdrpr.