Exploiting commercial technology to increase tactical radio performance: digital radio design

The advantages of digital signal processing (DSP) based radio designs vs. their analog counterparts have been well understood in the communications community for some time. The full exploitation of DSP in battery powered tactical gear has only recently been practical, with the availability of faster, lower power, more highly integrated DSP hardware. While the first generations of DSP hardware were driven by the military market, the commercial communications and PC multimedia market are currently spinning off products which can be readily exploited by radio designers to simultaneously increase radio performance and add more sophisticated waveform processing features. The advantages to the end user in mission flexibility and reduced lifecycle cost are discussed for newer digital radio designs