February 2004

Departments Publisher's Notebook 2004 Bus and Board Conference Gets Four Stars Editorial Musings from Bus and Board 2004

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Features

On the Softer Side
Software Defined Radio: Part 2

Meeting Security Requirements in Software Defined Radios
Brian Doherty, Green Hills Software

By using secure partitioning, an operating system can take advantage of a processor’s MMU to act like multiple processors—alleviating the need for redundant hardware and excessive power consumption and cost in portable software defined radios.

Design-Test Marriage Achieves Comfort Zone

Designing-for-testability has reached a new plateau as hardware/software co-verification tools get real.

Software Defined Radio: Status and Challenges
Allan S. Margulies, Chief Operating Officer, The SDR Forum

Progress in SDR technology has been fast in the last five years; the next five years will be even faster. But technical and regulatory challenges remain—in both military and commercial markets—as theory evolves to practice, implementation, widespread deployment and use.

Test and Screening
Design for Test

Design-for-Test Strategy Eases Unit Level Testing
Steve Tuttle, Chief Technology Officer, Quality Checked Software

Unit level test boosts reliability, but can be costly and time consuming. By crafting code for testability up front, those hurdles can be overcome

Pre-Use Methodology Speeds Up System Verification
Jim Lewis, Director of Training, SynthWorks Design

By pre-testing subblocks within a system, system-on-chip designs can be verified quickly without trading off any level of thoroughness.

Technology Focus
Reconfigurable Processors

FPGAs Pave Road to Reconfigurable Computing
Jeff Child

Thanks to advances in FPGAs, reconfigurable computing is starting to move into real systems. Military and space applications are warming to the technology.

FPGAs Let Designers Sharpen Their FFT Sword
Jane Donaldson, President/CEO, Jim Peterson, Senior Design Engineer, Annapolis Micro Systems

Using a variable precision FPGA-based FFT core enables designers to trade off speed versus FPGA space, and optimize performance.

Special Feature
Hidden Networks

Finding and Measuring Hidden Wireless Networks
Jeff Lazzuri, Vice President of Sales and Thomas Callahan, Vice President of Engineering, Dynamic Telecommunications, a PCTEL Company

Hidden wireless networks are all around us. In urban warfare and on the battlefield, finding and listening to hidden cellular networks speaks volumes about the enemy.

COTS View

Rugged COTS Forged from European Railway Standards
Ernest Godsey, PE; President, MEN Micro