In a today's radio node, more and more components are implemented in software (e.g. filters, modulators/demodulators, detectors) in always more intelligent devices. Such a design produces a radio terminal that can receive and transmit a different form of radio protocol just by running different digital functions and is the enabler of flexible or cognitive radio. Adaptability or auto-reconfiguration are mandatory features for the terminal to adapt to its environment and to the application used.
The CITI is engaged in the challenging co-design of analogical and numerical part of next generation radio. This supposes an important knowledge on flexible mixed RF-digital transmitter design and its impact on computation resource needs. Flexible terminals suppose enlarging degrees of freedom, thus conducing to large numerical data flows and high constraints in terms of real time processing.
The CITI works at different levels: reducing the hardware needs for flexible radio considering digital processing performances, optimizing the numerical resources sharing between several channels or standards, and more generally defining a way of designing signal processing implementation on a targeted architecture. Our laboratory has developed a multi-antenna, multi-channel and multi-standard receiver prototype in collaboration with Orange Labs, and also owns several Lyrtech SDR development Platforms.