Design and realisation of digital radio transceiver using software radio architecture

An extremely flexible hardware architecture of a base transceiver station (BTS) using software radio (SWR) technologies has been studied and an experimental prototype has been implemented in our R&D labs. It has been developed for the GSM system, has a bandwidth of 10 MHz and is able to provide up to sixteen carriers. The very flexible wideband solution allows a drastic reduction of the analogue circuitry in the system because it does not need any antenna branching, tuning filters, synthesiser on the local oscillator, implying lower costs, sizes, complexity, while reliability and repeatability are increased, than in a narrowband solution. Thanks to the reprogrammability of the parameters, the wideband approach and the remarkable reduction of the analogue section, the SWR architecture is well suited for the design of present and future generations of cellular mobile radio systems. In addition, the SWR technique is especially appropriate to be used together with an array antenna for the realisation of digital adaptive beamforming (smart antennas).