PE1-5.3 SDR Architectures & Digital Hardware
You can compare the ideal SDR architecture with practical ones, state the hardware specifications each demands, and analyse A/D signal-to-noise ratio against power consumption for handset and base-station cases.
The ideal SDR — an antenna straight into a converter — is a useful fiction that shows why real ones compromise: the required converter would need impossible dynamic range at impossible power. The derivation of minimum power consumption is the unit's serious content, because it converts a hand-wave about 'battery life' into a bound you can compute. Handset and base station diverge here for an obvious reason: one is on mains power in a cabinet, the other is in a pocket.
Work through these
Software defined radio architectures
The families of architecture, which differ in where the conversion between analog and digital happens. That single choice determines everything else.
The ideal SDR architecture and why it is not built
The architecture everyone draws first, with the converter at the antenna, and the reasons nobody builds it. The reasons are converter speed, dynamic range and power.
Required hardware specifications
What the hardware would actually have to do, in numbers. It makes the previous item concrete rather than rhetorical.
Digital aspects of an SDR; digital hardware
The digital side in outline, which is where the flexibility actually lives. It is the frame for the two options items below.
Alternative digital processing options for BTS applications
The choices available for infrastructure, where power and size are less constrained. More options are viable here than on a handset.
Alternative digital processing options for handset applications
The choices for a handset, where battery life rules everything out except a few. Comparing this list against the one above is the point.
Current technology limitations
What cannot be done today, stated plainly. It is the most useful item in the topic and the one most likely to date.
A/D signal-to-noise ratio and power consumption
How converter resolution, sample rate and power consumption are related. It is the quantitative core of why the ideal architecture is out of reach.
Derivation of minimum power consumption with examples
Deriving the floor on power consumption, with worked examples. It gives you a number to compare any proposed design against.
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