Blind radio access technology discovery and monitoring for software defined radio communication systems: problems and techniques

One of the prime goals of a reconfigurable terminal is that it shall work on a great range of systems and standards. Amongst the many features that are required to support this inter-system roaming is the ability to detect, discover or identify alternative systems. Having located alternative systems, the terminal then needs the ability to connect to them and also monitor them in order to determine how viable the level of service offered by each one is. This paper is an introductory study of the problems that a software defined radio (SDR) terminal will face during its initial power-on in a geographical area where no a priori information about the available networks is provided to the terminal.