A Survey of Software-Defined Radio Technology for Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry

This paper surveys the capabilities of commercially available software defined radios (SDR) and their suitability for use as receivers and demodulators in aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT). A case study, defined by 10 Mbit/s SOQPSK-TG operating in any of the IRIG 106 frequency bands, was used to determine SDR suitability for AMT. The survey investigated the frequency range, sample rate, the number of RF input ports, noise figure, automatic gain control (AGC), and cost. Different configurations are examined based on the SDRs capabilities and their use. The results show the costs of the SDRs along with their capabilities. Non-SDR options—digitizing tuners and data acquisition cards—are also briefly surveyed to consider options in which they may be used instead of an SDR.