Gadget Overload Relief in Sight 

Pagers. Cell phones. PDAs. GPS. It's almost getting to the point where you need an assistant to carry around all those so-called "portable" technologies.

Fortunately, a cure for wireless gadget overload may not be far off.

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It's called software defined radio; a technology that replaces analog radio circuitry with digitally generated samples of radio waveforms.

This week, wireless technology makers will convene in San Diego to demonstrate SDR, which could hold the key to developing a single standard for a myriad of portable devices.

By replacing the custom-designed, single-purpose transmitter and receiver electronics inside today's wireless gadgets with software running on a CPU chip, SDR developers hope to unlock new opportunities for wireless communications.

Just as multitasking PCs replaced specialized computers 20 years ago, SDR appliances could perform multiple wireless functions and allow innovators to create new applications for them.

"You could have your cell phone going, be using a Bluetooth headset and at the same time use GPS to check where you are," said Mark Cummings, steering committee chair of SDR Forum, the wireless industry trade association whose SDR '02 technical conference begins Monday.

Without SDR, Cummings said, that scenario would require cramming three separate radio circuits into a single phone.

Research on software defined radio dates back to the 1990s, when the U.S. military's SPEAKeasy project sought to develop portable radios that could switch among incompatible military systems used by different branches of the armed forces.

A decade later, increases in mobile processing power have led the cell-phone industry to focus on SDR as a means of building more flexible, profitable phone systems.

"This is a much more cost-effective way of building (phone equipment), and the hardware keeps getting cheaper," said Vanu Bose, whose Cambridge, Massachusetts, startup, Vanu develops and licenses SDR software for industrial use.

Vanu's first products aren't yet designed for personal handsets, but rather for the base stations that connect thousands of mobile customers at a time. The company's software runs on regular Linux servers, replacing specialized hardware that can cost more than $100,000 a site.

"We expect to be in field trials next year," said Bose.

SDR Forum members predict that software defined phones for consumers won't arrive for at least another year. The reason for the delay is that the new phones currently require more processing power than a handset with limited battery life can support.

John Watson, vice president of marketing for QuickSilver Technology, another conference exhibitor, said his company's new adaptive computing machine intends to solve that problem by delivering power on an as-needed basis only to the parts of a chip currently in use.

"You could call every phone on your network with a new (data compression module), add 20 percent more calls to the network, and make a lot of money without getting everyone to throw out their phone and buy a new one," Watson claimed.

More importantly, according to Bose and others, wireless carriers could experiment with new protocols and features without committing to purchases of specialized hardware.

"Right now, you have to do electronics design a couple of years ahead of time" before bringing new equipment to market, said Watson. "The only thing you know is you're going to be wrong. What you really want is to be able to design it at the last minute."

Of course, various hurdles remain for SDR proponents. In addition to technical issues, the technology also faces regulatory challenges from the FCC and European Union.

Because SDR devices can be reprogrammed after leaving the factory, their users may accidentally or knowingly reconfigure them in a way that violates radiation limits or interferes with other wireless signals.

A spokeswoman for the FCC said an FCC ruling last year cleared the way for approving SDR phones, but methods to prevent them from being reconfigured in a harmful way are still being evaluated.

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More stories written by Paul Boutin