Migrating Legacy Radios to the SCA Tutorial

Presented by Toby McClean and Mike Williams, Zeligsoft, Canada

Current software defined radios exist in two common forms: UML models; and/or source code. There is an industry wide desire to migrate a selected set of these radio to the SCA. Lead projects are finding it very costly and error prone to make a legacy radio SCA compliant. Some of the challenges: the steep learning curve associated with the SCA; transforming legacy models to the SCA; refactoring code to make it SCA compliant; ensuring compliance with specification; testing the new SCA components; and that the SCA itself imposes significant implementation challenges. With a Model-Based Engineering (MBE) approach to modernizing a radio, by migrating to SCA, it is possible for the quality of the radio to be increased while at the same time managing if not reducing the project costs. By combining MBE practices with specialized SCA tools the development team can: focus on ensuring the behavior and performance of the radio; leverage the knowledge inherent in an SCA-specific tool; leave the SCA aspects of the radio to the tool; and integrate the SCA tools and processes with their existing environment. This tutorial will demonstrate techniques and tools that will allow a development team to migrate from a "legacy radio' to an SCA radio using a model-based approach. We will start with legacy radio model and code assets and show a possible migration path to the SCA including deployment on a standard operating environment. The tool technology to be shown in this tutorial will be Spectra CX along with other commercially available software design tools used by radio developers.