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`Inventing the Internet again
`
`Inventing the Internet again
`
`George Gilder
`Forbes ASAP
`June 1, 1997
`
`In the early 1960s, working on America's second-strike
`capability, Paul Baran conceived the Internet. Now he wants to
`save the Net itself.
`
`Print Article
`
`FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE as an engineer, Paul Baran was "scared
`stiff." That can happen to people who stumble too close to the abyss of
`20th-century history and look over the edge. Born in 1926 in a house in a
`corner of Poland that had been claimed by three different nations during
`his parents' tenure, brought to America by his family at the age of 2, Baran
`was a child of European tempests.
`
`But now, in the heady Southern California of the 1950s, the young Hughes
`Aircraft engineer found himself working in an American crucible. He was a
`design engineer for the Minuteman missile control system. Unlike the
`liquid-fueled Titans of the previous era, which required hours of
`preparation before they could fly, Minuteman could be instantly rocketed
`into the sky. To the Pentagon this seemed safer. The solid-fueled rockets
`would not be vulnerable for hours on the ground awaiting fueling. But
`Baran and his colleagues knew that this would be the most deadly and
`dangerous military system ever built. One accident and a cloud of missiles
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`was on its way.
`
`Appreciating the risks in the proposed design, Hughes summoned Warren
`McCullough from MIT as a consultant on human behavior. An expert on
`command and controland a psychiatrist and brain surgeon to
`bootMcCullough explained the emerging facts of life. Throughout history, he
`told the Hughes engineers, the real command of the battle migrated to the
`men closest to the enemy. The man in the crow's nest, not the officers on
`the ship's bridge, was in de facto control. What he saw and reported
`determined the captain's orders. Regardless of nominal chains of
`command, the real governance of history moved to individual people on the
`front lines, often frightened or panicked at the time. But in the nuclear age,
`no such single person, necessarily fallible, could ever be trusted.
`
`Analyzing the technical problems of creating a command- and-control
`system for Minuteman, Paul Baran found himself abruptly in the crow's
`nest, stricken by historic terror"scared stiff," as he recalls. It was clear to him
`that the problem was systemic; it could not be solved by tweaking the
`command-and-control schemes then being proposed at Hughes.
`
`To explore the problem more broadly, Baran in 1959 left Hughes for RAND,
`the not-for-profit (the name stands for "R&D") set up after World War II to
`harbor the systems analysis skills developed during the war. At RAND the
`formidable strategist Albert Wohlstetter was demonstrating that in a matter
`of minutes Soviet short-range missiles could take out all U.S. foreign
`strategic air command bases encircling the Soviet Union. Then the Soviets
`could say stick 'em updemanding surrender on the basis of the vulnerability
`of remaining U.S. missiles to superior Soviet forces. In many vivid papers
`and speeches, Wohlstetter relentlessly presented his argument that U.S.
`forces faced a "missile gap." The famed Alsop brothers, leading columnists
`of the day (Stewart was the father of the computer writer), echoed the
`Wohlstetter claims. John Kennedy listened and made the gap a theme of his
`1960 presidential campaign.
`
`Wohlstetter and his colleagues urged that the Pentagon redeploy its
`strategic forces to the United States and endow them with a second-strike
`capabilitythat is, to withstand a first strike and retaliate in kind. Greatly
`reducing the temptation to go first, this posture would escape the
`dangerous hair-trigger tenterhooks of the early cold war.
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`A viable second-strike capability, however, assumed that the command,
`control, and communications systems would remain intact. It was here that
`Baran fretted. He saw that one nuclear explosion at high altitude would
`affect the ionosphere for many hours and thus wipe out all long-range,
`high-frequency radio communications. In addition, one strike at the
`centralized switching nodes of AT&T would destroy the rest of the control
`network. The missile system would endure, but it would be deaf and blind.
`
`Plunging deeper into history than Kennedy had, Baran resolved to design a
`communications system that could survive a nuclear attack and save the
`second-strike deterrent. He took inspiration from another idea of MIT's
`McCullougha parallel computer system with adaptive redundancy. Like the
`human brain, such a system could reconfigure itself to work even after
`portions were destroyed. But using the noise-prone analog circuits of the
`time, it was impossible to build the necessary switches. Baran concluded
`that all the traffic would have to be digital. Moreover, the digital traffic
`would have to be broken into short message blocks now called "packets,"
`each containing its own routing information, like a DNA molecule, and able
`to replicate itself correctly whenever a transmission error occurred. With
`many additions and permutations, his original design is today termed the
`Internet, and it is shaping the emerging history of the 21st century.
`
`THE INEXORABLE LOGIC OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
`
`Baran, though, is not satisfied with his creation. Contemplating its
`vulnerability to terrorism and other attack, he feels pangs of fear that echo
`his alarm of 40 years before. As more and more of the critical systems of
`advanced industrial society migrate to the Net, they become susceptible to
`new forms of sabotage, espionage, hacking, and other mischief. Air traffic
`controls, train switches, banking transfers, commercial transactions, police
`investigations, personal information, defense plans, power line controllers,
`and myriad other crucial functions all can fall victim to cybernecine attack. If
`the Internet is to fulfill its promise as a new central nervous system for the
`global economy, its security and reliability problems will have to be
`addressed.
`
`Seventy-one years old, still with his Ph.D. economist wife Evelyn (their son
`David is director of information technology at Twentieth Century Fox Home
`Entertainment), Baran remains in the crow's nest, buffeted by inklings and
`insights of historic threats and opportunities. In a sense, Baran's current
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`projects merely fulfill the far-reaching logic of his original concept,
`elaborated at RAND between 1960 and 1962 and published under the title
`On Distributed Communications in 11 compendious volumes in 1964: a
`survivable "network of unmanned digital switches implementing a self-
`learning policy at each node, without need for a central and possibly
`vulnerable control point, so that overall traffic is effectively routed in a
`changing environment."
`
`To fulfill this scheme, Baran specified all the critical functions of the
`Internet: packets with headers for addresses and fields for error detection
`and packet ordering. He described in detail the autonomous adaptive nodes
`found in Arpanet IMPs (interface message processors) designed by Bolt,
`Beranek & Newman (BBN).
`
`Baran also included features only recently and selectively introduced, such
`as encryption, prioritization, quality of service, and roaming ("provisions to
`allow each user to 'carry his telephone number' with him"). He described a
`web of peer nodes each connected to three or more other nodes, and he
`offered the first of the distributed routing algorithms that have multiplied
`over time.
`
`Unique to his vision was its grasp of the economics of a network that could
`handle "the expected exponential growth in the transmission of digital
`data." Declaring that "it would be possible to build extremely reliable
`communications networks out of low-cost unreliable links, even links so
`unreliable as to be unusable in present-type networks," he estimated that
`the price of the system would be some $60 million per year. That was some
`20 to 30 times less than what was being paid by the Department of Defense
`for their leased communications systems without any of these features. It
`was two orders of magnitude cheaper than new analog national systems
`being proposed at the time by each of the three military services.
`
`Thus Baran not only conceived the essential technical features of the
`Internet, he also prophesied the cliff of costs over which digital technology
`would take the networking industry. By imagining the compounding effects
`of Moore's law three years before Moore's own famous prophecy, Baran
`stressed the key economic drivers that impelled the prevalence of the Web
`as the universal Net.
`
`The system of communications that Baran attacked in the early 1960s at
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`RAND was the imperial establishment of AT&T. As Baran explains, "While
`AT&T did have digital transmission under examination, it was in the context
`of fitting directly into the plant by replacing existing units on a one-for-one
`basis. A digital repeater unit would replace an analog loading coil. A digital
`multiplexer would replace an analog channel bankalways a one-for-one
`conceptual replacement, never a drastic change of basic architecture. I think
`that AT&T's views on digital networks were most honestly summarized by
`AT&T's Joern Ostermann after an exasperating session with me: 'First, it
`can't possibly work, and if it did, damned if we are going to allow the
`creation of a competitor to ourselves.'"
`
`In 1972 the company sealed its fate by turning down an opportunity to buy
`the entire Arpanet. As Larry Roberts explained in Where Wizards Stay Up
`Late, "They finally concluded that the packet technology was incompatible
`with the AT&T network." So it was and so it still is. The existing phone
`system remains the chief obstacle to the final triumph of the Net. But the
`logic of digital communications is inexorable. It will displace all the existing
`establishments of television and telephony.
`
`WASTED FOREVER...LIKE WATER OVER A DAM
`
`These days Baran's vision, however, goes far beyond wireline
`communications. Baran takes the Internet model and extends it boldly to
`wireless communications. On June 23,1995, on the occasion of the Marconi
`Centennial, marking the 100th anniversary of the invention of the radio,
`Baran gave a momentous keynote speech in Bologna, Italy. In it he
`demanded a radical reconception of wireless networks.
`
`"The first 100 years of radio," he declared, were marked by a perpetual
`"scarcity of spectrum....One of the very first questions asked of young
`Marconi about his nascent technology was whether it would ever be
`possible to operate more than one transmitter at a time. Marconi's key
`British patent #7,777 taught the use of resonant tuning to permit multiple
`transmitter....[Yet] even today, with over 30,000 times more spectrum at our
`disposal than in Marconi's day, entrepreneurs wishing to implement new
`services encounter the same perpetual shortage of frequencies."
`
`Focusing on the most desired bands between 300 and 3,000 megahertz
`(UHF), Baran asserted that when you "tune a spectrum analyzer across a
`band of UHF frequencies," you discover that "much of the radio band is
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`empty much of the time. This unused spectrum might be available for
`transmission if we could take measurements and know exactly when and
`where to send the signal."
`
`As an example, he cited "the many millions of cordless telephones, burglar
`alarms, wireless house controllers, and other appliances now operating
`within a minuscule portion of the spectrum and with limited interference to
`one another. These early units are very low power dumb devices compared
`to equipment being developed that can change its frequencies and
`minimize radiated power to better avoid interference to itself and to others.
`
`"In part," he declared, "the frequency shortage is caused by thinking solely
`in terms of dumb transmitters and dumb receivers. With today's smart
`electronics, even occupied frequencies could potentially be used."
`
`The chief reason for the apparent shortage of spectrum, he concluded, is
`regulation of it. Echoing his earlier critique of wireline communications, he
`declared that "the present regulatory mentality tends to think in terms of a
`centralized control structure, altogether too reminiscent of the old Soviet
`economy. As we know today, that particular form of centralized
`system...ultimately broke down. Emphasis with that structure was on
`limiting distribution rather than on maximizing the creation of goods and
`services. Some say that this old highly centralized model of economic
`control remains alive and well todaynot in Moscow but within our own radio
`regulatory agencies."
`
`The heart of the problem is the concept of spectrum as public propertyas
`scarce real estate or a precious natural resource. Spectrum is nothing of the
`kind. It has been created by a series of brilliant technical innovations,
`beginning with Marconi and continuing in a steady stream of high
`technology oscillators and digital signal processors: from mag-netrons and
`kystrons to varactor multipliers and surface acoustical wave devices, from
`gallium arsenide and indium phosphide heterojunctions to voltage-
`controlled oscillators and Gunn or IMPATT diodes. Spectrum is chiefly a
`product of inventors and entrepreneurs. Americans will rue the day when
`foreign governments and international organizations begin auctioning and
`taxing, marshaling and mandating the use of these mostly American
`technologies.
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`The real estate model applies chiefly to broadcasters and others using
`analog modulation schemes in which all interference shows up in the signal.
`A television signal requires some 50 decibels of signal to noise power, or
`l00,000-to-1. By contrast, error-corrected digital signals can offer virtually
`perfect communications at a signal-to-noise ratio well below 10 decibels, or
`10,000 times less. Moreover, new digital systems can divide and subdivide
`the spectrum space into cells and differentiate calls by spread-spectrum
`codes or even isolate particular connections in space by space-division-
`multiple-access-devices that function as "virtual wires" allocating all of the
`spectrum to each call.
`
`Baran pointed out that "any transmission capacity not used is wasted
`forever, like water over the dam. And there has been water pouring here for
`many, many years, even during an endless spectrum drought." Although
`Baran urged as an ideal the transfer of the 480 megahertz of spectrum
`currently occupied by analog broadcasters to fiber optics and cable coax, he
`said, "We don't have to wait [for this ideal solution].... The existing spectrum
`can be more efficiently used by resorting to smart receivers and
`transmitters."
`
`SMART RADIO IS A BRAIN BEHIND THE ANTENNA
`
`To conceive of Baran's model of wireless, begin by thinking of the human
`eye and comparing it to a radio. Like a radio, the eye is essentially a device
`for converting photons into electrons, pulses of electromagnetic energy into
`electrical currents. Geared for visible light rather than radio frequency
`signals, the eye is a receiving antenna. As radio technology moves up
`through the microwaves toward the infrared realmwith infrared wireless
`links from Canon now reaching 155 megabits per secondmany of the
`differences are dissolving.
`
`Yet, in the crucial index of performance, the radio is drastically inferior to
`the eye. While most radios can receive signals across a span of frequencies
`ranging from the kilohertz to the megahertz, from thousands to a few
`million cycles a second, the eye can grasp signals with a total bandwidth of
`more than 350 trillion hertz (terahertz). That is the span of visible light, from
`400 terahertz to 750 terahertz, red to purple.
`
`How is it that your eyes command 350 terahertz of bandwidth and your FM
`radio around 20 megahertz, 17 million times less? It is not chiefly the special
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`powers of the retina and other optical faculties. Radio antennas can collect
`an even larger span of frequencies. The difference is mostly behind the
`receiver. Backing up the eyes is the processing power of some 10 billion
`neurons and trillions of synapses. Backing up the radio antenna is a lot of
`fixed-analog hardware. Eyes are smart and aerobatic while the radio is
`dumb and blind.
`
`In Baran's vision, the future of wireless is the replacement of current dumb
`radios by smart digital radios that resemble eyes. Coupling radio technology
`with computer technology, the antenna can acquire a brain. Smart radios
`can eventually process gigahertz of spectrum (billions of cycles a second).
`They can sort out the frequency channels much as eyes sort out arrays of
`color, and pin down codes and sources of radiation much as the eyes descry
`different sources, shapes, and patterns of light. For example, a smart radio
`could process phone calls, videos, teleconferences, geopositioning codes,
`speed-trap lasers, and emergency SOS's.
`
`The result will be a transformation of the nature of the spectrum. The
`current real estate model will give way to a new view. Rights to spectrum will
`roughly resemble drivers' licenses for use on the highways. Today you use
`your 350-terahertz eyes to survey the highway in front of you and avoid
`other traffic. As long as you do not collide with other users, pollute the air,
`or go too fast (use excessive power), you can drive anywhere you want. As
`radios are computerized, they will be able to "see" the radio frequency
`spectrum as your eyes see the roads. Smart radios will be licensed to drive
`in open spaces in the air as long as they don't collide with other radios,
`overpower them, or pollute the airwaves.
`
`As Baran argues, the fulfillment of this dream is at hand. It is the broadband
`digital radio or software radio. Essentially, the radios used in cellular or PCS
`(personal communications services) phones will be able to differentiate
`among frequencies; they will be able to tell which direction a signal is
`coming from and isolate it in space; they will be able to identify the language
`of codes and protocols and waveforms that it is using and download
`software translators. No longer caught in a dedicated set of channels, time
`slots, protocols, data types, and access standards, radios will be smart and
`agile rather than dumb and fixed frequency.
`
`MOORE'S LAW WILL LEAPFROG TODAY'S LIMITS
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`This will not happen tomorrow. But like any technological vista, it
`illuminates the future. It opens the way to a new wireless paradigm, fully in
`place shortly after the turn of the century, that will mandate an entirely new
`model of wireless regulation and a new method for judging the evolution of
`companies and their prospects. In general, the companies on the path to
`broadband digital radiosthe smart radiowill prevail over companies that
`hook their futures to hardwired machines linked to narrow spans of
`frequencies. Moore's law, the doubling of computer power every 18 months
`or so, is enabling the creation of broadband cellular radios in which most of
`the processing occurs in digital form.
`
`Some of the first smart radios were built for the military. In Operation
`Desert Storm, the cacophony of allied combat radiossome 15 of them using
`a variety of frequencies, modulation techniques, encryption codes, and
`waveform standards, such as AM or FM or PCM (pulse code
`modulation)created a virtual Babel in the sand. Units needed a separate
`radio system for every radio (or radar) standard. As a result, the Pentagon
`launched the Speakeasy projectone smart radio that could process all the
`different standards in software. Made by Hazeltine and TRW, the first
`prototypes were demonstrated successfully in 1994. Because standards
`change over time and hardware improves at the pace of Moore's law, a
`software programmable radio also saves money. Rather than upgrading the
`system in hardware every time the technology changes, software radios can
`be upgraded merely by downloading a new software module.
`
`Speakeasy engineers have spread the word through the cellular industry.
`Stephen Blust, now at BellSouth Wireless, is leading an international effort
`to create smart radio standardsthe MMITS project. Today, with the advance
`of an array of new digital technologies, including CDMA, TDMA, GSM, DECT
`1900, SMR, PHS, and a spate of others, every urban area is becoming a
`Desert Storm of incompatible radios. Not only are these systems unable to
`communicate with one another, but they also require separate spectrum
`and base station equipment. All this redundant processing has raised the
`costs and reduced the universality of wireless and prevented cell phones
`from displacing wireline telephony.
`
`The solution to complexity, however, is Moore's law: Put it on a chip.
`Reducing this Babel of complexity to silicon microchips, with hundreds of
`millions of transistors on centimeter slivers of sand that ultimately cost less
`than $2 to manufacture, smart radios can radically simplify the cellular
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`landscape. Freed of most wires, poles, backhoes, trucks, workers, engineers,
`and rights of way, cellular should be far cheaper than wireline.
`
`For example, the conventional analog base station that receives your
`cellular calls and connects them to the telephone network requires a
`million-dollar facility of 1,000 square feet. This structure may contain a
`central-office-style switch to link calls to the public switched telephone
`network, huge backup power supplies and batteries to handle utility
`breakdowns, and racks of radios covering every communications channel
`and modulation scheme used in the cell. This can add up to 416 radios,
`together with all the maintenance and expertise that multiple standards
`entail.
`
`In the near future, one wideband radio will suffice. Digital signal processors
`ultimately costing a few dollars apiece and draining milliwatts of power will
`sort out all the channels, codes, modulation schemes, multipath signals, and
`filtering needs. Gone will be the large buildings, the racks of radios, the
`arrays of antennas, the specialized hardware processors. Gone will be the
`virtual honeycombs towering in the air in time and space with exclusive
`spectrum assignments and time slots, and possibly gone will even be the
`battalions of lawyers in the communications bar.
`
`All this apparatus can be replaced by a programmable silicon base station in
`a briefcase, installed on any lamppost, elevator shaft, office closet, shopping
`mall ceiling, rooftop, or even a house. The result, estimated Don Cox of
`Stanford, the father of American PCS at Bellcore, could be a reduction of the
`capital costs of a wireless customer from an average of some $5,555 in 1994
`to perhaps $14 after the turn of the century. That is a paradigm cliff of
`costs.
`
`As smart radios are delivered in the first years of the new century, they will
`allow escape from the zoo of conflicting protocols. Base stations will be
`programmable in software, able to handle any popular protocols, including
`the new technologies that will be emerging. The world of wireless will
`escape the bondage of air standards, where if you live in a GSM (global
`services mobile) area, you are forced to use GSM, and if you live in a CDMA
`(code division multiple access) area, your communications-poor cousins
`visiting from Europe will have to give up their GSM phone and demand to
`borrow yours (will they ever give it back?). Under the new regime, different
`standards mean different software loaded into RAM (random access
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`memory) in real time. Any cell can accommodate a variety of access
`standards, channel assignments, and modulation schemes, and the best
`ones will win.
`
`FROM MICROWAVES COME TORRENTIAL BITS
`
`To get there from here, however, will require heroic achievements in the
`technology of radios. Every radio must combine four key components: an
`antenna, a tuner, a mixer, and a modem. Easiest is the antenna. Even
`though antennas too are converging with computer technology and
`becoming smart, for many purposes a shirt hanger will do the trick. It is the
`other components that deliver the message to the human ear.
`
`Tuners usually employ the science of resonant circuits to select a specific
`carrier frequency or frequency band. The cellular band, for example,
`comprises 25 megahertz at around 850 megahertz. The PCS band comprises
`some 30 megahertz at around 1,950 megahertz. A mixer converts these
`relatively high microwave frequencies into an intermediate frequency (IF) or
`to a baseband frequency, which can be converted to a digital bitstream.
`
`Familiar in the PC world, a modem is a modulator-demodulator. In
`transmitting, it applies an informative wiggle (AM or FM, say) to the carrier
`frequency. In receiving, it strips away the carrier, leaving the information.
`
`In the old world of dumb radios, transceivers join all these components into
`one analog hardware system. In the new world of smart radios, only the
`antenna and the front-end mixer are analog and hardwired. Channels,
`frequency bands, modulation schemes, and protocols all can be defined in
`software in real time. The radio becomes a programmable microwave eyea
`device that can see whatever colors of RF you want to send it.
`
`The key to digital radio is the analog-to-digital converter. It takes a radio or
`intermediate frequency and samples it at least at a rate double the
`frequency to translate it into a series of numbers. Imagine a strobe light
`illuminating a dancer. The light will have to strobe at least twice as fast as
`the dancer moves or you will not be able to detect the dance. Indeed, in a
`phenomenon called aliasing, you may see a different, slower dance, as you
`see a tire rotating slowly in the wrong direction on a film. In a similar way,
`an ADC strobes (samples) the dance of inflected frequencies on the carrier
`wave. The resolution of the ADC is measured in bits, setting how high the
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`number can be that defines the waveform and, in samples per second,
`determining how high a frequency the ADC can capture without aliasing.
`
`Ultimately, early in the next century, the advance of analog-to-digital
`converters will dispense even with the mixer. Then the all-software radio
`will be here. Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) will be able to translate
`microwave frequencies directly from the antenna into a digital bitstream.
`Alcatel has already accomplished this feat in the GSM cellular band at its
`labs in Marcoussis, France. But so far this almost totally digital radio is a
`stunt rather than a product. That will change.
`
`Most of today's ADCs cannot function reliably in real time at microwave
`frequencies (above 300 megahertz). Therefore, mixers are vital. Whether
`digital or analog, a mixer is essentially a multiplier. As invented by E. H.
`Armstrong, the father of FM, mixers are superheterodyne. They use local
`oscillators (LOB) to multiply the carrier frequency with a lower frequency.
`The key result is a frequency that represents the difference between the LO
`frequency and the carrier. This frequency is an intermediate frequency that
`holds all the information borne by the carrier but at a level that can be
`processed by existing ADCs.
`
`By far the most effective mixer is the paramixer invented by Steinbrecher
`Corporation of Burlington, Massachusetts, now owned by Tellabs and
`renamed Tellabs Wireless. This device can range gigahertz of frequencies
`with a spur-free dynamic range (a range of volumes without spurious
`crackles or harmonics) that could capture the sound of a pin dropping at a
`heavy metal rock concert. For a fully digital superbroadband radio, a
`cascade of these still-costly devices is still the best bet. The pioneer of this
`technology since it was conceived a decade ago by MIT professor Donald
`Steinbrecher, Tellabs's Burlington operation introduced the Steinbrecher
`MiniCell in May for wireless local loop and interior cellular applications.
`
`Tellabs has had trouble selling its wideband radios for cellular applications,
`for which they may be overdesigned. With the increasing spread of CDMA,
`which ordinarily uses only one to three channels, the initial gains from a
`broadband radio are small. But for a wireless local loop, with many
`thousands of customers in the Third World using all available channels, a
`broadband base station could offer large effficiencies. Replacing a large
`number of costly custom radios with one programmable device, the MiniCell
`may find its niche.
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`As ADC technology continues to advance, however, it will relieve pressure
`on the mixer, opening the way to still cheaper and lower power solutions.
`With the expiration of Steinbrecher's patent on the paramixer, the business
`is opening up. Watkins-Johnson has created a tiny mixer device in gallium
`arsenide the size of your smallest fingernail. So has Mini-Circuits of
`Brooklyn, New York. "It has 50% less performance than Steinbrecher's, but it
`costs only 10% as much. Many customers say, 'It's a deal,'" observes former
`Steinbrecher CEO and president R. Douglas Shute, now contemplating a
`startup.
`
`AD converters are now edging toward microwave frequencies. Both Analog
`Devices and Comlinear, a National Semiconductor company, have
`introduced 40-megasample-per-second products at a resolution of 12 bits.
`This allows more of the mixing to move into digital multipliers. The first of
`the digital downconvertor chips came from Harris Corporation of
`Melbourne, Florida. Harris now has parlayed its expertise in RF and mixers
`into the creation of a sophisticated programmable machine that
`demonstrates the management of multiple modulation schemes in one
`cellular radio. Introduced on the floor of the Fifth Annual Wireless
`Symposium Exhibition in late February in Santa Clara, California, the Harris
`smart radio showcases its programmable HSP50214 digital downconvertor
`chip and is run from a PC. With an array of displays, the machine is
`designed to allow configuration and testing of smart transceivers from a
`Windows PC.
`
`With high-powered digital signal processors and leading-edge ADCs, Analog
`Devices is a paragon of the digital radio paradigm. At the CTIA (Cellular
`Telecommunications Industry Association) meeting in San Francisco during
`the first week of March, Analog introduced a wideband smart radio tuned to
`the cellular band but applicable through the PCS band as well. A reference
`design to be used by infrastructure manufacturers, it displays an array of
`new chips from Analog comprising a specialized ADC called the 6600,
`tunable filters called the 6620 and the 6640 that function as a digital tuner,
`a SHARC DSP chip that performs the modem and channel-coding role (any
`advanced DSP will do), and a "sinfully cheap" Watkins-Johnson mixer chip
`the size of your fingernail. Incorporating an automatic gain control and a
`received signal strength indicator, the ADC is customized for smart radio
`applications.
`
`http://www.discovery.org/a/20[12/17/2015 6:05:53 PM]
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`

`
`Inventing the Internet again | Technology and Democracy Project
`
`The antenna is from Radio Shack (most any will do). From a Windows PC
`using Visual Basic, Analog engineers can move from one cellular channel to
`another and from GSM to CDMA to DECT 1900 to IS-136 to the Japanese
`Personal Handyphone system (PHS). As manufacturers around the globe
`converge on a single intermediate frequency of 70 megahertz, the reference
`radio could adapt to an