|
Newsletters
|
|
|
|
|
|
WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
World’s First Open-Source C++ Implementation of the Software Communication Architecture Released
Blacksburg, Virginia (August 2004) – Virginia Tech’s Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG) improves educational and research opportunities for the wireless community by releasing the first-ever open-source C++ implementation of the Software Communication Architecture (SCA), the fundamental framework used in software-defined radios.
One of the most significant barriers to entry into the software-radio research arena in general and the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) community in particular is the availability of a software framework, such as JTRS’s Software Communication Architecture (SCA), that is free, is easy to use, and is written in a language common to most wireless developers, such as C++. The open source version of the SCA, OSSIE (Open-Source SCA Implementation::Embedded), was funded by the CIA through the DCI Postdoctoral Research Program, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the MPRG Industrial Affiliates Program, and the volunteer time of many students.
The availability of an easy-to-use implementation of the SCA core framework should make understanding the basic functionality of the SDR as a whole and the SCA in particular significantly easier for today’s wireless engineering student. Another benefit inherent to OSSIE is that it lowers the barrier for entry into the arena for smaller development groups and research centers, “Effective implementation of SDR in wireless infrastructure application requires an efficient, low-overhead easy to use framework. An open source approach towards such an SCA, such as OSSIE, should boost software radio education and spur innovation in software radio research across the country,” says Alan Gatherer, CTO of Wireless Infrastructure for Texas Instruments.
The underlying philosophy for OSSIE is simplicity. The goal is to establish a framework for entry-level graduate students to quickly familiarize themselves with the specifications and arrive at the point where they can perform meaningful research early on in the educational cycle. To maintain the open-source nature of the project, the initial release of OSSIE leverages ACE/TAO, an open-source implementation of CORBA, the Xerces XML parser, an open-source XML parser, and Windows 2000/XP. The modular nature of the implementation allows the developer to port the framework to other CORBA implementations, XML parsers, and operating systems. Future releases of OSSIE will support additional operating systems such as Linux and VxWorks. The OSSIE implementation of the SCA is available for download as open-source from http://www.mprg.org/research/ossie.
|
|
|
