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Now 37, he recalls being delighted at his opportunities as a child to visit the Bose research labs. As an undergraduate at M.I.T., he plunged into the world of FM radio signals while typesetting a research paper for his father (on FM radio reception when signals arrive at different times after bouncing off various obstructions).
"That solidified my interest in the field and the math behind it," Mr. Bose said. "I always felt I could figure it out if I sat down and worked hard enough on it."
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But Amar Bose never pushed his son to do anything related to the family business, and Vanu Bose appeared for a time to be heading in quite a different direction. He did his initial graduate research on the design of skin patches as an alternative to needles or pills for delivering medicine. Coming on the heels of a two-year stint working with Project Orbis, which flies an eye-care hospital in a DC-10 to impoverished regions of the world, Mr. Bose's research focus pointed toward a career in medical technology.
He was lured back into the signal processing fold by David Tennenhouse, a professor who hired him as a teaching assistant and then persuaded him to lead a software radio study financed by the Defense Department. The four-year project produced an experimental software radio format called Spectrum Ware, a Ph.D. for Mr. Bose and the core technology used to found his company.
The company's first notable product, quite unintentionally, was a battle with M.I.T. over property rights to the technology he invented as a student. The university wanted $1.25 million over eight years in licensing fees, assorted royalties ranging from 4 percent to 10 percent on software and hardware products Mr. Bose might develop, and a 6 percent ownership stake.
It was an impossible demand for Mr. Bose, who wanted to follow his father's example of investing heavily in research and avoiding becoming beholden to venture capitalists out for quick profits.
Vanu Bose eventually worked out a compromise with the university, and these days his energies are focused on software radio's future and his company's place in it. In a field that includes giants like Motorola and L. M. Ericsson and startups like AirNet and QuickSilver, Vanu stands out as the company most committed to designing systems that use common processors, open-source products like the Linux operating system and reusable chunks of software.
"Vanu has got a unique approach," said Allan Margulies, chief operating officer of the SDR Forum, a trade group for companies trying to develop standards and regulations to support the spread of software-defined radio.
Relying heavily on such general-purpose building blocks sacrifices some of the performance benefits of using specialized chips and programs. It has also allowed others using more specialized components to get to market faster with products that fulfill some of software-defined radio's potential. But the goal is to position Vanu and the companies that license its software to ride the coattails of the huge investments that companies like Intel and Advanced MicroDevices make each year to improve general processors.
"Moore's Law is working for us," Mr. Bose said, referring to the observation that the general cost of processing tends to fall by 50 percent every 18 months.
If the strategy works, devices incorporating Vanu software will be upgraded more often and more easily than those of other software radio designers. That in turn could accelerate the speed at which software radio technology becomes inexpensive enough to be embedded in most radio devices.
"They are the first people to really push software radio commercially," said Eric Blossom, head of the GNU Radio Project, which is coordinating efforts by programmers and systems developers to develop software radio devices using completely unpatented and freely shared technology.
So far, the pushing has netted Vanu and its 25 employees research-and-development contracts, including some with Bose to use Vanu technology for projects unrelated to software radio. The company was also part of a team led by Boeing working on an early stage of the Joint Tactical Radio System project, the Defense Department's effort to develop a software radio strategy for the armed forces.
But other startups are further along commercially. AirNet, for example, has sold systems enabling overseas phone companies to switch to higher-speed signal formats without having to install new equipment at every base station; instead, customers will simply download software from a central office.
Mr. Bose said his company expected to conclude new licensing and consulting deals by this spring.
"Getting their first major sale is their critical challenge," said Peter Cook, a former Motorola scientist in Phoenix who has become a well-known software radio consultant. "Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia - the equipment companies who could pick this stuff up and run with it - have been following developments but are reluctant to jump in because they make a lot of money selling maintenance to today's base stations. If a company like Vanu can break through with one big customer, the market could come tumbling after them."
