The brave new world of SDR repeaters

The wireless world may not move as fast as the mobile, but there are plenty of technology changes coming down the line that both vendors and customers will have to deal with. ‘In the repeater world it is very important to be future proof,’ says Håkan Samuelsson, founder and CTO of repeater manufacturer Axell Wireless.

‘If you are talking about the present TETRA system, in-building coverage and the trend towards TEDS, then maybe the bandwidth of the repeater channels needs to be changed because of the higher data rates used by TEDS,’ says Samuelsson.

The company’s software-defined radio technology (SDR) allows it to refresh the software on its repeaters, which makes it an attractive proposition for its customers as they do not need to buy new hardware.

Samuelsson says: ‘Repeater installations need to be changed in the future and with SDR we can simply download new software and make the functionality of the repeater correspond to the new challenges. But we don’t need to do any hardware upgrades, which is one of the major benefits of the new system.’

Axell Wireless showed off its new BSR438 digital band selective TETRA repeater in Budapest, which is the latest model to use the company’s SDR and digital filtering technology.