A Middleware Based Network Hot Swapping Solution for SCA Compliant Radio

Software Communication Architecture (SCA) provides a framework for developing Software Defined Radios (SDR). Theoretically, SCA compliant SDRs are supposed to have the capability of self-configuring and switching from one wireless protocol to any other. However, conventional SDRs running standard upper layer protocol stack fail to switch wireless protocols on the fly retaining all the connections and incur large delay. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for wireless protocol switching that is free from these problems. We base our approach on dual or multiple antennas operable by SDR software. The main contribution of this paper is the Hot Swapping Middleware (HSM) that ensures seamless switching between wireless protocols without affecting the application performance. HSM manages IP addressing issues transparently and ensures in order delivery of data packets without loss. Our proposal is free from any requirement of infrastructure support, light weight and easily SCA component upgradeable. Experiments show that our proposal improves the total data transfer of applications in an SDR by more than 25%.