A software-defined radio (SDR) is a versatile radio communication system that employs reconfigurable software-based components for processing digitized signals. The SDR paradigm offers high flexibility, facilitating upgrades or updates to radio communication systems at a low cost due to functionality and components implemented as a software embedded system. Some of these components include filters, amplifiers, decoders, and mixers. In addition, SDRs offer superior performance, suiting them for a broad array of industrial applications.
An SDR generally consists of two parts: a radio front end and a digital back end. In a typical SDR receiver, the radio front end is an RF tuner that converts the incoming radio-frequency (RF) signal into an intermediate-frequency (IF) signal. Subsequently, the IF signal is then fed into an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that converts it into a digital signal. The digitized signal is then channeled into a digital back end for processing.