Alliance to hammer out SDR specs

Scottsdale, AZ: The VITA Standards Organisation (VSO) and the Software Defined Radio Forum (SDR Forum) will collaborate on the software-defined radio specification activities currently underway at each organisation. The initial focus of the relationship will be in the area of Digital Intermediate Frequency (DigitalIF) data transport. DigitalIF defines the signal and control data that’s passed between the radio-frequency (RF) subsystem and the baseband signal-processing subsystem of a software-defined radio.

VITA is developing the VITA 49 standard, which defines this data transport and allows manufacturers of these two types of subsystems to use a common data-transport protocol. This will ultimately simplify integration and facilitating interoperability.

The SDR Forum’s System Interface Working Group (SIWG) is also looking at DigitalIF, with a goal of defining the requirements for a common set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that can later be standardised. Collaboration between the SDR Forum and VITA ensures that the APIs (a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications) developed will fully support the VITA 49 standard, and provide a venue for VITA members to influence the API requirements. The SDR Forum is also examining the DigitalIF standards used by other industry associations operating in adjacent markets.