On-Board Automatic Certification System for Software Defined Radio

摘要

Under current radio regulations, it is illegal to change the configuration of a radio after its type approval has been acquired. However, the reconfigurability of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) terminal, which is one of its benefits, is possible by changing its software in the field. This contradicts current radio regulations. Therefore, a new authorization procedure is necessary for system reconfiguration using SDR. It is necessary to satisfy the radio regulation. In other words, a new authorization procedure requires techniques to prevent the operation out of the allowed limits of SDR in the field. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism, called Automatic Certification System (ACS), as a solution to these regulatory issues for SDR. The ACS is a system which gives type approval automatically to the software which affects the output power, central frequency, frequency band, modulation type and which controls analog circuits on an SDR terminal. We also propose the ACS based framework which aims to distribute the burden of the software manufacturer, hardware manufacturer, and governmental authority. After that, we describe the inspection method and discuss the case of a modulation scheme which can be Phase Shift Keying (PSK) or Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) schemes. Our simulations confirm that the ACS is able to certify the modulation software at the terminal.