Potential of software-defined radios to enhance the quality of hybrid networks

Software-defined radios have received much attention recently, but only little work has targeted the identification of those components that have the highest impact on the quality of the signal transmission and reception. In this paper we therefore have a closer look at the reception path in wireless communication systems. We provide a general overview of those transmit/receive components which play a role in every communication system and give an analysis of the most prominent problems in today´s network designs to see if and how software-defined radios can help to overcome them.