Practical implementation of software defined radio (SDR) for mobile wireless devices will place significantly increased demands on design approaches and integrated circuit (IC) technology. Next generation wireless terminals, third generation (3G) and beyond, are required to provide much higher levels of features, functions, and services than their second generation (2G) counterparts. Examples include such capabilities as higher throughput, multiband, multimode, multimedia, and location-based services. This demand for new capabilities is occurring simultaneously with the demand for portability driving key physical requirements of long battery life, small size, light weight, etc | Software Defined Radio Edited by Walter Tuttlebee Copyright 2002 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBNs 0-470-84318-7 Hardback 0-470-84600-3 Electronic 9 Adaptive Computing IC Technology for 3G Software-Defined Mobile Devices Paul Master and Bob Plunkett Quicksilver Technology Practical implementation of software defined radio SDR for mobile wireless devices will place significantly increased demands on design approaches and integrated circuit IC technology. Next generation wireless terminals third generation 3G and beyond are required to provide much higher levels of features functions and services than their second generation 2G counterparts. Examples include such capabilities as higher throughput multiband multimode multimedia and location-based services. This demand for new capabilities is occurring simultaneously with the demand for portability driving key physical requirements of long battery life small size light weight etc. Combined all these issues add to the design challenge of next generation devices. Wireless terminals are quickly approaching a point in the product development roadmap that without a paradigm shift in the basic IC design architecture they will not be able to meet these demanding consumer requirements. The ideal design solution would be to take advantage of the processing efficiencies of an application specific integrated circuit ASIC . high processing power low power consumption while retaining the flexibility of a digital signal processor DSP . This is the very essence of a new class of IC based on adaptive computing technology described in this chapter. A comparison of adaptive computing architecture to that of conventional fixed-function IC technologies - ASICs DSPs microprocessors mP and field programmable gate arrays FPGAs - is presented showing performance improvements of an order of magnitude to be easily achievable. Software Defined Radio - A Solution for Mobile Devices The case for application of SDR for mobile devices has been well .
