A software radio is a flexible wireless communications device that implements its signal processing entirely in software. Software radios can easily change features such as modulation, bandwidth, and coding that are fixed in more traditional radios. The basic technology of software radio is now being deployed in military and commercial applications.

This talk introduces the key technical challenges and design approaches of software radios. Then we focus on issues related to networks that exploit the flexibility of software radio to improve performance, which are called dynamic wireless networks. Cross-layer optimization and opportunistic reconfiguration (for example in frequency, power, topology) are core attributes of these networks.

Dr. John Chapin is CTO at Vanu, Inc. Prior to joining the company, he was an assistant professor at MIT in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. He also worked at Sun Microsystems prior to and during his graduate studies. In 2000, President Clinton awarded Dr. Chapin the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). John earned all of his degrees from Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1997, his M.S. in Computer Science in 1991 and his B.A. in East Asian Studies in 1989.