Most of the latest SDRs use an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC) close to the antenna followed by Digital Down Conversion (DDC). DDC is usually performed in an FPGA or ASIC and is used to reduce the bandwidth and data rate of the samples that are subsequently processed by a microprocessor, PC or single board computer. However, with the availability of low cost and high performance Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) an alternative architecture can be used that has a number of advantages over the current DDC approach. Phil will present the theory and some practical examples of this alternative architecture.
