A low-cost two-way radio transceiver

A few years ago, NCR came to Bell Labs (the research arm of Lucent Technologies) with an unusual challenge. How do you build a two-way digital radio for well under one dollar? After overcoming the initial instinct to laugh it off as an impossible task, we started to investigate various options and architectures. This paper summarizes the technical solutions that went into the final design, which is now part of a successful NCR product offering.