| The Software Defined Radio (SDR) Forum, an international organization dedicated to promoting the development and deployment of software radio technologies, has chosen Mercury Computer Systems to develop a reference waveform implementation compliant with the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Software Communications Architecture (SCA). The implementation will demonstrate best practices in SCA-compliant waveform development and serve as a reference to the industry. It will be available to the SDRF members for a period of six months, and will then be released to the industry via the Forum’s website.
For this purpose, Mercury chose to implement the Future Multi-band Multi-waveform Modular Tactical Radio (FM3TR) waveform and extend the specification to provide Medium Access Layer and Logical Link Control functionality.
This paper describes a step-by-step approach to a complete SCA-compliant waveform development cycle. These best practices include:
- Specifying the waveform
- Choosing the Application Program Interfaces (APIs) the waveform components will support
- Componentizing the application with portability and interoperability in mind
- Simulating functionality in MATLAB
- XML, UML descriptors
- Automatic-code generation
- End-to-end reconfiguration of waveform components
The paper concludes with a summary of the lessons learned throughout the waveform development process. |