A team from Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) and Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC) has performed the world's first public demonstration of a commercial wireless radio application working in a Software Defined Radio (SDR) environment. International industry experts attending the SDR Forum's Annual Meeting in San Diego in November 2002 rewarded the Canadian researchers' leading-edge work with an ovation.

The demonstration was the final deliverable of CRC/DRDC's contract with the SDR Forum to translate the paper specifications of the US Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Software Communications Architecture (SCA) into an open source Reference Implementation. The SCA has been mandated for all future US Department of Defense terrestrial radio systems and is being proposed to the Object Management Group for commercial applications.

To validate their implementation, the CRC group had to demonstrate a simple radio application, so they demonstrated signal processing on a real-time voice channel. However, the team was able to exceed the demands of the contract and the expectations of the conference participants when, as a surprise application, they demonstrated Digital Audio Broadcasting (better know under its commercial trademark DAB™).

This demonstration involved a number of technologies produced at CRC. The core of the demo was the SCA Reference Implementation which downloaded, configured and ran the software DAB receiver on a Pentium PC platform. The SCA was implemented by CRC's Military Satellite Communications Research group: Claude Bélisle, Research Manager; Steve Bernier, Project Leader; and Capt. Hugues Latour, SATCOM Scientific Officer, DRDC. The Java-based open source code is available on CRC's Web site.

The software DAB receiver was developed by CRC's Advanced Audio Systems group headed by Louis Thibault. It incorporates an Ultra-Fast Viterbi Decoder developed by CRC's Communications Signal Processing group led by John Lodge and a data-acquisition framework developed by the Radio Communications Technology group led by Joe Schlesak. The transmitter equipment incorporated a software implementation of the DAB multiplexer developed by René Voyer's Radio Broadcast Systems and Transmission group.

The successful SDR wireless demo is an important milestone in the development and adoption of this emerging technology. It also suggests that SDR technology may be available for military and commercial use sooner than expected.

CRC is now developing a C++ implementation of the SCA version 2.2 (project name SCARI++) and will offer support to industry for adaptation to specific platforms. Various software tools that will greatly help application software developers and radio integrators are also being developed.

A demonstration of this technology is planned for January 2003 in Ottawa. For more information about the January demo or upcoming software development, please contact Claude Bélisle.