Software-Defined Electronic and Information Systems, Virtual Instrumentations

Dear Colleagues,

Measurement engineering and telecommunications are about information processing. In conventional approaches, dedicated circuits are used to process the information carried by signals. These hardware (HW)-defined solutions are fading away in our time and more and more applications are implemented entirely in software everywhere from measurement engineering to RF radio devices. The most important feature of SW-defined implementation is in its huge flexibility where both the functionality and the parameters of the application can be changed easily without modifying the HW platform behind. For example, the same vector signal analyzer can be used either as a spectrum analyzer or as a constellation analyzer.

The SW-defined approach is changing the way completely how we teach, research, design, and implement our systems, opens new perspectives, and generates a complete shift in the instrumentation engineering and ICT paradigms.

Measurement engineering was the very first to exploit and has been playing a pioneering role in using the SW-defined implementations. In measurement engineering, flexibility and reconfigurability are the most important issues and the price and power consumption are not as important as in commercial electronics. Any type of equipment that includes the word “vector” in its name, for example, vector signal generators and vector signal analyzers, belongs to this class of implementation. Virtual instrumentation also refers to that way of implementation where test equipment is implemented entirely in SW. The PXI-based solution even enables the user to design their own test equipment.

In an SW-defined approach, the HW and SW components are completely separated and only one universal HW device is used to establish the transformation between the data streams processed and generated in SW on a computing platform and the real-world (physical) signals.

The three basic constituting elements of the SW-defined concept are (i) theory of complex envelopes, (ii) virtual instrumentation, and (iii) software-defined radio, all of which have been available for some time. However, universal HW transformers capable of operating in the RF, microwave, and optical frequency regions have only recently become available at a reasonable price.

The Special Issue will cover band-pass SW-based information processing from theory to practice in measurement engineering. Submissions coming from other areas are also welcome provided that they have contributions to measurement engineering. Comprehensive papers surveying the state of the art in the constituting fields are especially welcome. Well-balanced material that can be used in research, education, and industry will be published.

Contributions are expected to address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Software-defined electronic and information systems
• Vector-based test equipment
• Virtual instrumentation
• Software-defined radio
• SW and HW platforms suitable for the implementation of software-defined systems
• PXI-based system
• Mathematical methods and algorithms used to implement software-defined systems
• Theory of software-defined systems
• New algorithms suitable for equivalent baseband implementations

Equivalent baseband transformation and implementation

Prof. Geza Kolumban
Guest Editor

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