Software radio promises substantial benefits to real-world systems by making them more flexible, interoperable, and easily upgradeable. Interoperability and upgradeability are particularly important to first responders, who need to quickly establish communications with a diverse and predictable set of agencies in a very short amount of time.
This project is developing new computational models and architectures for software radio. While software radio systems have received considerable attention, many of the design methods in use today are ad hoc. The goal is to develop a principled approach that works from models of computation through synthesis down to architecture-related cost models. This approach treats reconfiguration, the reallocation of architectural resources on-the-fly during execution, as a first-class design concept. The new methodology provides an abstract model for software radio algorithms that is suitable for algorithm designers as well as cost models that allow sophisticated architectural optimizations and hardware/software co-design. The project validates its models of computation and implementation models using realistic systems.
As part of this project, the team is developing curricular materials on software radio, including both lecture materials and labs that provide a complete, senior-level capstone design experience. This project also enables research and education collaborations between George Fox University students and faculty and their counterparts at the University of Maryland at College Park and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
