Software design issues in networks with software-defined-radio nodes

The concept of a software-defined-radio (SDR) has been of considerable academic and industrial interest for several years. SDR allows a radio to be described by its software; thus, a single radio can change its operation to suit the current needs of the system. A parallel trend in wireless technology is the integration of multiple types of nodes into a single network. The challenges associated with a network absorbing multiple types of nodes, each with different quality-of-service (QoS) attributes, are significantly increased when the nodes in the network can be reconfigured in real-time. Issues in object-oriented development are presented, and tradeoffs in design are considered. Radio system designers in the future will need to address not only link-level issues, but, to produce SDR that is easily integrated into a larger infrastructure, will also need to take into consideration the larger network issues.