A Technical Review of SCA Based Software Defined Radios: Vision, Reality and Current Status

Abstract

The SCA 2.2.2 architecture has achieved widespread adoption in the military communications market. Hundreds of thousands of SCA enabled software defined radios (SDRs) have been deployed to date, and world-wide dozens of programs are working to field more of these types of radios. The reasons for this success are the benefits enabled through adoption of the SCA: proven cost and delivery time advantages, lower logistical overhead through enhanced inter-component interoperability, simplified insertion of new communications capabilities in deployed radios, enhanced coalition interoperability through portability of waveforms and reduced development risk. As a result of this success, new countries and new organizations have begun to explore the use of the SCA, driving a second generation of SDR market adoption. Successful deployment of SCA 2.2.2 based SDRs has identified improvements to be made to advance the technology further. The Wireless Innovation Forum is working in close collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC) to evolve the SCA. The resulting SCA 4.1 specification represents the future of defense SDR technology.