An Analogue Front-End Architecture for Software Defined Radio

A Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a radio receiver and/or transmitter, whose characteristics can to a large extent be defined by software. Thus, an SDR can receive and/or transmit a wide variety of signals, supporting many different standards. In our research, we currently focus on a demonstrator that is able to receive both Bluetooth and HiperLAN/2. This helps us to identify problems associated with SDR, and will provide a test-bed for possible solutions to these problems. The two standards differ significantly in characteristics like frequency band, signal bandwidth and modulation type. Combining two different standards in one receiver appears to pose new design challenges. For example, in the wide frequency range that we want to receive, many strong signals may exist. This leads to severe linearity requirements for wideband receivers. This paper describes some receiver architectures. One design has been selected. This receiver has been built, and some measurement results are included.