Software Defined Radio (SDR) is the killer application for dynamically reconfigurable logic, and reconfigurable logic is the answer to further integration of the RF functions inside the mobile phone handset, according to industry bosses at the Globalpress Summit Conference in Monterey this week.

“It’s the application we’ve been waiting for. We never had an application until software defined radio came out. SDR is the killer app of reconfigurable logic,” Wim Roelandts, CEO of Xilinx, told EW, adding, “now that we know the app we can supply the tools.”

Dr Henry Samueli, co-founder and CTO of Broadcom, couldn’t agree more. “We’ve a long way to go before there’s real convergence on the handset. We have different chips for WiFi, NFC, UWB, Bluetooth, FM radio etc etc. We have to converge the RF, but we can’t put seven radios on one chip."

"So radio has to reconfigure itself. The same piece of silicon has to be able to reconfigure itself as a Bluetooth radio, or a UWB radio, or aWiFi radio or an NFC radio,” said Samueli.

But not everyone shares the view that SDR is about to have a major impact on the wireless comms market. According to UK regulator Ofcom, R&D into SDR continues, but “in some cases niche applications exist where the technologies are applied, however universal adoption or the case for it does not seem likely in the near future”.

Xilinx currently has a good business with the US military’s Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) where re-configurability is used to allow all branches of the military to talk to eachother despite using different radio frequencies and encryption schemes.