Software-defined radio

A software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components historically implemented in hardware (for example, mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.

Several people working on software-defined radios have released open-source designs (open hardware).

One application of software-defined radio is radio astronomy.

Some people build RFID Readers using software-defined radio so a single reader can read many kinds of RFID tags, perhaps even some not yet invented.