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Linux Powers First Handheld Software Radio
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at LinuxDevices.com, Vanu Technology is demonstrating what it claims represents the world's first handheld 'software radio' using an iPAQ PDA running Linux at a conference in Washington DC today. Vanu apparently has implemented the signal processing functions on the iPAQ's XScale processor, and their software uses POSIX APIs to make it platform independent. Software radios implement multiple radio standards and frequency bands in software, rather than hardware. A standard iPAQ expansion pack houses the radio transceiver."
This looks really cool, but it seems that the cost will be prohibitive for people who just want to listen to the radio. As the article mentions, the ability to operate on many different formats is probably more geared towards industry uses. Oh, and of course it will save lives because emergency response teams will be able to communicate better ;)
If you've read the article, it's not just an reinvention of wheel:
According to Vanu, unlike traditional hardware radios, which are limited to one specific type of communication service, "software radio" technology enables a single wireless device to implement multiple radio standards and frequency bands, thus eliminating the ened for multiple hardware radios when communication with multiple radio services is required.
Check the local hardware shop. A hardware with comparable functionalities is very expensive. I'm sure the manufacturer has targeted this specific market segment correctly.
Compare it with a home-use radio is just like comparing a professional camera with an instant-camera.
Someone else got it right. This is more like being able to configure a particular device to do any wireless standard without requiring custom RF hardware, ASICs, and DSPs to do the signal processing and modulation/demodulation for each technology it handles. All the protocols and such (if we're talking about something like a GSM/TDMA/CDMA phone) would already be handled in software anyway. It's the low layer h/w receiver, transmitter, and signal processing (i.e. radio) stuff that's expensive to design and build and fit into portable devices. It sounds like this is their reference design and probably their intention is to try and license this technology to PDA and mobile phone makers.