Design considerations for rugged and reconfigurable digital receivers

The digital receiver is a crucial component in the Software Radio architecture. It must meet the various requirements of reconfigurability, modularity, flexibility and survivability to be suitable for use in rugged Software Radio applications. Pentland Systems have designed the RAD-2 to meet these requirements and this paper describes the main design choices made and experiences gained in the development process. The paper also covers the challenges of conduction-cooled design and the techniques that can be used to achieve maximum system performance with a limited power budget.