Bangalore: The Bharat Electronics Limited
is developing a light-weight, cost-effective software-driven
communication radio that can operate on any frequency band.
The software-defined radio, as this device is called,
can operate on Very High Frequency, Ultra High Frequency, High
Frequency and L-band, which otherwise need different radios.
The radio can also work with any legacy radio.
"It (software-defined radio) will change the way
communication is managed in a battlefield situation", said I V
Sarma, Director (R&D) of the defence electronics company under
the Ministry of Defence.
In these radios, hardware blocks would be replaced by
software ones. So, a software will do the job of a hardware
Circuit Board.
"A software today can generate a waveform which is
equivalent to a modulated signal," Sarma said, adding, "Every
hardware element in the radio is getting replaced by a piece
of software".
"Entire radio can be designed using quite a lot of
software", he said, adding, there will only be hardware to run
the software and to amplify power.
BEL, which has supplied close to 2 lakh radios
(earlier versions) to the Defence Forces till date, expects to
demonstrate the Army-version of the software-defined radio in
March and come out with the ones for Air Force and Navy within
a year from then.
PTI
