By the end of this decade, a 4G wireless terminal will be available that provides high quality multimedia, personalized services, and ubiquitous multi-standard broadband connectivity with a reasonable power consumption. In this context, a multi-band transceiver is needed that provides a high-level of programmability while keeping low design complexity and costs. Software Defined Radio (SDR) is the most promising technology to implement such a terminal as it enables multi-mode reception by tuning to any frequency band, by selecting any channel bandwidth, and by detecting any modulation.This volume aims to describe the transition towards a Software Radio from the analog design perspective. As the original idea of a full-digital Software Radio is far from the state-of-art, an analog front-end is still needed to achieve a feasible implementation.

This is the first book to describe most of the issues involved in the transition from a single standard to a Software Radio based wireless terminal. The book is both a technology tutorial for beginners as well as a starting point for technical professionals in the communication and IC design industry who are approaching the design of a Software Defined Radio. A complete overview of the actual state-of-art for reconfigurable transceivers is given in detail.