Software-based Wireless: Nirvana at Last?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.vanu.com/sdrpressrelease.html' target='_blank'>http://www.vanu.com/sdrpressrelease.html</a><br /><br /></div>This sounds almost too good to be true - an end to struggling over which wireless standard to choose, and instead you have a device that can adopt a new standard with a mere software patch? Vanu Inc. seems to think so.<br /><br />I've spent some time reading their white papers, and it seems like the concept is this: devices would have a wireless receiver that listens on frequencies from 30 MHz to 2.5 GHz. Their software then sits atop that receiver, providing a virtual radio stack - as easy as installing a software patch, you'd have access to a new type of wireless data. Your company moves from 802.11b to 802.11g? No problem, install a software patch and your device is now 802.11g ready.<br /><br />The implications of this are staggering - so much so that I have serious doubts this technology will ever come to light. On one hand, it would mean that all manner of devices would have access to wireless data in new ways, and that could potentially mean new revenue streams...but would it be enough to counter-act the revenue lost from the upgrade frenzy we're all stuck in due to our one-trick-pony wireless devices?<!><br /><br />Vanu has several white papers up, one of them talks about a <a href="http://www.vanu.com/publications/vanuinc-sdrforum-sd-submitted.pdf">beta test they ran using an iPAQ.</a> Below is a photo and some quotes from the white paper.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/software-radio.jpg" /><br /><br />"The RF-to-digital block is implemented as a card that covers the frequency range from 30 MHz to 2.5 GHz, and has selectable bandwidths of 30 kHz, 200 kHz, and 1.25 MHz. It is designed to operate over the temperature region of –40 °C to +85 °C and has a maximum transmit power of 0.6 watts, while providing transmit power control capable of meeting IS-95 requirements. This card also contains the A/D and D/A converters as well as a digital control interface for setting parameters and measuring variables such as received signal strength.<br /><br />The antenna block includes both the antenna as well as a portion of the RF card. The RF card contains several antenna ports. The active port can be selected through software to enable use of different antennas for different bands, or multiple can be activated for applications that exploit diversity. The digital control interface to the antenna block in Figure 1 is actually implemented as part of the RF card, which is why the dotted grey line that outlines the antenna block contains part of the RF card.<br /><br />At the time of this writing, the iPAQ system is being tested, so a complete list of benchmarks is not yet available. Preliminary data indicates that the IS-136 forward voice channel receiver consumes 22% of the 200 MHz StrongARM processor. The receiver software measured includes equalization, synchronization, separation of timeslots, demodulation, decoding, vocoding and message processing."<br /><br />They have a <a href="http://www.vanu.com/sdrpressrelease.html">new press release that contains further background information.</a>

[sharmahw1]

While there are issues of battery life and fcc approvals etc. take a look at the CNN report:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/11/25/new.spectrum.ap/index.html

Vanu Bose has big dreams, too: to create that new generation of radios -- that's really all that cell phones and garage-door openers are -- that can move between various functions with an icon click. The trick is to replace much of the circuitry found in radios with flexible software.

Bose began working at it in a military-sponsored communications project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating in 1998, he started his own company, Vanu Inc., to further develop the technology.

Now Cambridge, Mass.-based Vanu Inc. has created an all-software base station -- which relays calls from wireless phones on cellular networks. Vanu also has built a prototype handheld computer that can make calls on different kinds of wireless networks and work as a walkie-talkie, baby monitor, FM radio -- "whatever you want," Bose said.

The big challenge is that the device is limited to 10 to 20 hours of battery life. Bose -- son of the stereo engineer who founded Bose Corp. -- believes that with more development and improvements in low-power microprocessors, the device could be the size of a cell phone and have a much longer battery life.

[sharmahw1]

Did anyone go to this meeting or know someone who did... could perhaps shed some more light..

The future of software radio was on display at the 2002 Software Defined Radio (SDR) Technical Conference and Product Exposition last week in San Diego. For the first time, Vanu Inc. demonstrated an end-to-end wireless infrastructure system based on Vanu Software Radio™ technology, a radical approach to SDR – aligning wireless devices with the Moore's Law curve for technology improvement and innovation.

I can imagine a Samsung Nexio with a keyboard, horizontal screen and a SDR that makes is all in one device....PDA, Cell Phone, walkie-talkie and .......
Re
Harsh

[mookie123]

I just hope this company will get a quick killer apps, even a small one, instead of chasing global world domination pipe dream and dies on exhaustion after 6 months battling the giants. Greed and overblown ambition always kills these sort of out-fit.

[Timothy Rapson]

Isn't this what happened to modems? (now all in firmware), sound cards? (ditto...well, not completely ditto.) and I/O functions?

This would be terrific. Cheaper, lower power draw, more flexible. Cool.

[Jason Dunn]

Isn't this what happened to modems? (now all in firmware), sound cards? (ditto...well, not completely ditto.) and I/O functions?

Sort of - the WinModem had a grim fate though...it made systems quite sluggish when in use, but hopefully we have enough CPU muscle now that this would be minimized.

[Gary Garland, Esq.]

Astounding idea. Hmmm, at this point it uses 1/5 of the processing power of the ipaq strongarm - obviously they'll have to solve the power draw and resource draw of the stack - perhaps low cost ICs will accomplish both...geez, what will they think up next?

[blade_of_narsil]

I don't mean to be picky, but when you say 30 to 2.5, doesn't that exclude 802.11b that runs at 2.4. Hope I am wrong.

[jschloer]

Not to be picky, but isn't 2.4 Ghz greater than 30 Mhz, but less than 2.5 Ghz?

Either way, this could be very very cool. Especially if it's easily customizable. I think it would do a lot for network security as well if you were able to pick a frequency not normally used, like 2.3 Ghz or something odd like that. Forgive me if there's some technical limitation which would prevent that, but I think this could make for some very interesting toys.

[jmulder]

I don't mean to be picky, but when you say 30 to 2.5, doesn't that exclude 802.11b that runs at 2.4. Hope I am wrong.

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say...that you hope it excludes 2.4GHz or that it includes 2.4GHz.

The point of the article is that the same hardware chip cuold be configured to communicate at any frequency from 30MHz to 2.5GHz, so the same chip could be configured to use 2.4GHz for cordless phones, 802.11b(a,g), and bluetooth, or the chip could be configured for use as a GSM phone (any band), or a CDMA phone, or a garage door opener.

Basically, one chip, one manufacturing line, different uses, probably lower prices, and certainly better upgrade paths (provided devices allow you to reconfigure the chips).

-Jim

[donkthemagicllama]

jschloer: while you could technically run at 2.3GHz or whatever freq you wanted (ideally a lower frequency that would have better range), you'd get in trouble because it's illegal. There's only a few bands that you can transmit on without a licence. 900MHz, 2.4GHz and somewhere in the 5GHz range... These frequencies have been set aside as 'free-for-alls' by the government (at least in Canada and the US).

The concept isn't really a new one, just one that hasn't been practicle because of the lack of affordable highspeed DSP hardware. FPGAs (which this product seems to use judging by the big Altera part) are filling this need.

[Kirkaiya]

Sort of - the WinModem had a grim fate though...it made systems quite sluggish when in use, but hopefully we have enough CPU muscle now that this would be minimized.

Well, that was true earlier, when CPUs were pretty sluggish anyway (remember Windows 95 on a 90 MHz Pentium?).

My mother's computer has an AMD Athlon, running at 650 MHz, and a winmodem (I bought a bunch of cheap components and put together for her, since her needs weren't really to intensive).

She's on AOL all the time, and there really isn't any performance hit I've been able to see. I think there aren't many things people do with computers these days that really peg the CPU for more than a fraction of a second, with the exception of digital media creation/playback.

Someday, I'm thinking almost all the wireless (and wired) comm devices will be "soft" - easier upgrades, 1 device handling multi-protocols, backward compatibility.. .

[JonnoB]

No 5Ghz however.....

[Timothy Rapson]

Isn't this what happened to modems? (now all in firmware), sound cards? (ditto...well, not completely ditto.) and I/O functions?

Sort of - the WinModem had a grim fate though...it made systems quite sluggish when in use, but hopefully we have enough CPU muscle now that this would be minimized.

Right, when they were first introduced, the CPU was having such a hard time running Windows 95 on Pentium 133s that it slowed overall system stuff down. I believe that virually all network stuff, modems, sound, and video use some CPU time on the lowest cost systems. Cyrix pioneered this way back when and many CPUs are designed just for this.

The CF, MMC, and other slots on most PDAs have required their own special hardware chip in the past. The new Motorola ARMs and the most recently described chips in that Samsung microPPC show that the CPU can do more if it is properly designed to do so. WiFi would be a wonderful place for this to advance.

I am way over my head here on the actual hard technology knowledge. For example I could not tell you what any of these chips actually look like. But, the ideas are fascinating and are leading to wonderful places.

[blade_of_narsil]

I guess it helps to reread the Ms and Gs several more times. Thanks for setting me straight. I thought he said it went from 30GHz to 2.5GHz. Thats about the same window I had heard for Ultrawideband stuff, except a good bit lower than 2.5GHz. If it works it'd be great, but I suppose it leaves 802.11a out to dry. No loss.

[marcusbankuti]

I like Nirvana