A direct microwave down-conversion method for software radios

Over the past few years, the software radio has emerged from theoretical research as a commercially viable and flexible digital communication system. Advances in digital technology are quickly making the software radio an attractive strategy for low-cost multi-dimensional transceivers. In software radios a relevant problem is the down-conversion with high image frequency suppression. For this purpose a down-converter has been developed utilizing a signal processing method along with the homodyne reception principle. A simplified system has been built to test this new method. For comparison the development of intermediate frequency digital sampling approach is in progress.