Virtual radios - hardware/software co-design techniques to reduce schedule in waveform development and porting

Todaypsilas military-based communication programs are attempting to leverage software defined radio (SDR) technology for reducing lifecycle costs by promoting the reuse of waveform software. Although an SDR offers the developer flexibility for software development; porting a waveform application from one SDR to another can be challenging due to variations in requirements, software operating environment (OE), compute resources and hardware design. By asserting that the most effective porting does not begin until an engineering design model (EDM) becomes available means SDR product specific issues may not be uncovered until late in the schedule. However, this risk can be mitigated by inserting advanced hardware/software co-design techniques. In this paper, we will address the technical challenges surrounding the development and porting of waveform software through a virtual radio approach which leverages state-of-the-art virtual platform technology common in commercial system-on-a-chip (SoC) developments.