Efficient SW Design and SW Design Efficiency: Fuel for Software Defined Radios

Wireless access schemes will be implemented on software defined radios (SDRs) in the future. A main challenge is to implement wireless access schemes in software on SDR platforms. 'Efficiency' is there the key target! Indeed, the SW efficiency largely impacts the energy SDRs will drain from the wireless terminal's battery. Moreover, SW design efficiency has been shown to become more and more the bottleneck in the total design effort and time for flexible radios. Therefore, a strategic plan is proposed, and results of its implementation on wireless access schemes are presented. In the future, new challenges in SW design for SDRs pop up, yet opportunities to improve SW and design efficiency also come into sight.