As the latest development in a string of European efforts (including projects, workshops and communications), the workshop "Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio (CR) Standardization" took place on 17/18 November, in Ispra, Italy.

The event was organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), and co-hosted by the European Defence Agency (EDA) and the Directorate General Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR).

 sxc.hu

The meeting was attended by a wide range of public and private stakeholders. Fruitful debates led to the agreement on the main points of a forthcoming standardization mandate - covering commercial, public safety and military domain - for SDR and CR to be addressed to the European Standardization Organizations (the European Committee for Standardization, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute). The European Telecommunications Standards Institute, in cooperation with EDA, JRC and DG ENTR, has presented a model aiming at reaching a European standard for the EU civil security sector and joint EU civil/military operations in the short/medium term, and a converged standard allowing transatlantic interoperability in the mid/long term (i.e. between Europe and the US).

Background

SDR and CR are expected to become important drivers for the evolution of wireless communications. These technologies provide substantial benefits: from reconfigurable flexible and cost-effective architectures for wireless devices to a better utilization of the radio frequency spectrum which helps to mitigate the ever increasing “spectrum scarcity” problem. They could also open the door for broadband usage in secure communications which is largely restricted in available technologies and enable portability from one network to another. Such potential solutions are naturally attractive to the commercial sector but are also of great interest for the civil security and the defence communities. Creating a set of standards acting as a common framework to include all the involved stakeholders' needs would therefore allow for huge economies of scale for future SDR and CR products. Standardization in this field has great potential for stimulating innovation and competitiveness of the European industry representing core goals of the EUROPE 2020 strategy.