con efecto, puedo jurar que mi primera temporada en Mondariz es una de las épocas más alegres de mí vida

For ease of reading, the book has been logically structured into four interconnected parts. Part I discusses origins and drivers of SDR. The first chapter seeks to provide an orientation for the reader for what follows in the remainder of the book, giving a top level introduction to origins, drivers, technology and the scope and potential impact of SDR and providing specific

‘hooks’ into subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 then provides a comprehensive description of the origins of the drivers and concepts of software radio within the US defence community, outlining the progression from the earliest ideas, through to the SPEAKeasy programme, PMCS, JTRS and more. It was these initiatives that gave birth to the MMITS Forum, now known as the SDR Forum. Chapter 3 provides a chronological description of the evolution and activities of the Forum, including its transition from a defence-driven community to its present wider commercial perspective.

Part II discusses the market opportunity and requirements of SDR. It begins with a chapter describing the MIT Sloan School of Management study of the factors influencing the devel-opment of the SDR market. This study was commissioned, and acted upon, by the SDR Forum. It offers some fascinating insights into the application of the scientific method to the understanding of technological markets, as well as providing some specific and clearly articulated strategies for industry players. Arguably the essence of market success is to achieve an optimum match of products to customers; for SDR, ‘customers’ may be consid-ered at two levels – the end-user and the mobile network provider. Thus the next chapter describes an approach developed in Europe aimed at understanding end-user requirements of future mobile services and the implications for SDR research. The final chapter of this section explores a mobile operator perspective of the potential of SDR, within the context of third generation mobile communications and beyond, describing potential use cases, business models and changes in the industry value chain.

Part III explores the global context of SDR. The first two chapters in this section review recent research and development frameworks and activities in Europe and Japan, respectively (North America having been implicitly covered in earlier chapters). The emphases in these two regions have reflected local perspectives and specialisms. Both chapters provide compre-hensive overviews and references for those wishing to pursue more detail. Standardisation is an important issue for telecommunications, especially wireless, and the next chapter explores the first embodiments of international standards as they affect SDR, in the form of the Mobile Execution Environment (MExE). MExE was standardised by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), but incorporated input from the SDR Forum in this process. Next to stan-dardisation, national and regional regulation is the second issue of significance when consid-ering SDR in a global context – to a global mobile operator, common global regulation is desirable, just as are common global standards. Thus the next two chapters explore devel-opments on this front, firstly in Europe and then in North America.

Part IV presents descriptions of early product approaches, with just two examples, one aimed at the defence marketplace and one at the commercial one. The defence example is a military HF/VHF/UHF radio family capable of providing interoperability and flexible air interface reconfiguration. The commercial example describes an SDR-based approach to implementation of the European Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard and the resulting products now on the marketplace. It concludes by describing plans to extend the approach to address the third generation mobile market.

Finally…

Whilst every effort has been made to secure a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the subjects it is inevitable that any book of this nature will be incomplete, if only because of the fast pace of industry activity. Some of the topics treated in this book will already be familiar to some readers whilst others will be new. We have endeavoured to achieve a reasonably consistent level of treatment, although in some areas specific issues have been explored in greater depth. For those new to the field and for those wishing to probe deeper on particular topics, a selection of references has been included in each chapter, some providing general background and others addressing specific detail.

The contributors to this book, as may be seen from their biographies, are individuals who have played a significant role in the emergence of SDR and its development over recent years in North America, Europe and Asia. Their contributions reflect their own unique personal insights and perspectives – although they have all kindly adopted a common chapter struc-ture, for the benefit of the reader. As Editor I have sought to balance the desire for readability with the desire to preserve the contributors’ individual styles and opinions. This inevitably means that the views expressed in any particular chapter do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, nor indeed those of some other contributors. The contributors, the Editor and the publishers cannot accept liability for any errors or omissions which, in any work of this nature, may occur. It would be appreciated, however, if any errors could be brought to the attention of the Editor for correction in future editions. Thank you.

Walter Tuttlebee December 2001

Part I