A CORBA-based DAMA modem for the Digital Modular Radio (DMR)

The advent of the software defined radio (SDR) concept has offered a new paradigm for the modem designer. Consider the requirements of implementing a MIL-STD-188 UHF DAMA modem in a CORBA-based software environment. Here direct access to the hardware is denied. Interfaces to the synthesizer and AGC functions are wrapped in CORBA-based calls. In addition, no hardware timing signals exist to help establish frame synchronization. These and others are the requirements that were successfully met in our implementation of the UHF SATCOM modem for the Digital Modular Radio (DMR) program. This CORBA-based software modern solution is not attached to any particular piece of modem hardware and, as such, is highly portable. This paper reveals the architectural features that allow the inherently slow CORBA-implementation to synchronize and respond to the real-time requirements of the DAMA network