Systems and methods for wireless communications

Abstract

The invention provides systems and methods that include, inter alia, wireless communication systems that integrate wireless receivers and transmitters with host computer platforms and that include a data access channel that delivers into the memory space of an application program digital data that is representative of a base band modulated signal. Accordingly, these systems can employ wideband digitization of an incoming signal, such as an RF signal, direct the digitized data into the application memory space of a general purpose workstation, and allow an application program operating on the general purpose work station to perform the digital signal processing that obtains the information encoded within the digitized signal.

We claim:  
     
         1 . A method of processing radio signals, comprising 
 converting between a wideband signal and a high sampling rate digital signal,    under control of a direct memory access controller in communication with a processor, storing samples of the high sampling rate digital signal directly into an application memory space without interrupting the processor, said application memory space being accessible by a computer program;    processing the high sampling rate digital signal samples under control of the computer program.    
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein sampling is continuous.  
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein samples are stored at a rate equal to the sampling rate.  
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the wideband signal has a bandwidth of 10 MHZ and sampling rate is at least 20 mega-samples per second.  
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein processing further comprises modulating a signal to the digitized IF signal.  
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein processing further comprises demodulating a signal from the digitized IF signal.  
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein processing further comprises channel selection.  
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein storing samples under control of the direct memory access controller comprises: 
 maintaining, in the direct memory access controller, a list of physical page addresses associated with buffers in memory;    reading a page address from the list,    transferring, between an input/output device and memory to which the page address is associated, the high sampling rate digital signal samples; and    repeating continuously the above reading and transferring steps.    
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 8 , wherein storing samples under control of the direct memory access controller further comprises: 
 removing the page address from the list; and    providing new page addresses by interrupting the processor when the number of page addresses in the list falls below a predetermined threshold, such that an interrupt handler provides the new page addresses.    
     
     
         10 . A method for processing a radio signal, comprising: 
 converting, in an analog domain, between a radio frequency signal and an analog intermediate frequency signal;    converting between the analog intermediate frequency signal and corresponding digitized intermediate frequency signal data;    buffering the digitized intermediate frequency signal data in a buffer;    under control of a direct memory access controller in communication with a processor, transferring, in page multiples, pages of digitized IF signal data between the buffer and memory without interrupting the processor; and    processing the digitized intermediate frequency signal data in a computer program.