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News Release from: RF Engines
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 July 2007
Research investigates one-for-all
receiver
RF Engines has won a grant to research into a novel and flexible receiver architecture that is reconfigurable on-the-fly.
Signal-processing specialist RF Engines has won a further UK Government research grant The latest grant from the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) is to undertake research into a novel and flexible receiver architecture that is reconfigurable on-the-fly
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Sep 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The application areas for the fully flexible wideband receiver range from commercial wireless communications such as wireless basestations, through to test and measurement applications.
RFEL also expects there may be future use for the architecture in handheld media devices that are using an increasingly wide range of RF frequencies for WiMAX, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth, wireless LAN, mobile TV etc, and thus a reconfigurable receiver provides a more cost effective and smaller solution than a number of dedicated receiver circuits.
Traditionally, radio receivers have been designed as a series of discrete building blocks each addressing specific frequencies, which can add up to a large amount of silicon real estate.
The RF Engines design approach is focused on the combination of flexible analogue and digital elements in such a way as to allow reconfigurability of the complete system for different applications as required, via software/firmware.
The resulting software defined radio (SDR) increases the amount of digital signal processing to move the analogue/digital boundary closer to the antenna, thus reducing the complexity and limitations of the RF front end.
It should also deliver a solution that has lower power consumption, smaller size, wideband performance and enhanced system performance.
The project is likely to lead to the development and production of a number of receivers.
This is a progressive move for RF Engines, which has, until now, been focused on complex firmware intellectual property (IP) designs.
"For some time now, customers have been asking us to provide complete turnkey solutions which integrate our firmware designs", explains John Summers, CEO of RF Engines.
"We've already done this for certain key customers, but we've now reached a stage in the growth of the company where we feel that we can extend this added-value service, as it enables us to exploit our RF and systems expertise to deliver complete product solutions to a wider audience".
Commenting on the award, Jeff Alexander, SEEDA Executive Director for Global Competitiveness, says: "RF Engines has shown a remarkable ability to commercialise its innovative designs".
"We are confident that RF Engines will follow through to similar commercial success with its latest project".
"This will create and support regionally based high value jobs in the process".
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