TODAY'S SOFTWARE RADIO TECHNOLOGY is at the same place personal computers were in the 1970s, according to Max Robert, a post-doctoral researcher at Virginia Polytechic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. The technology will be big, but first it needs a nudge.

Researchers at Virginia Tech, including Robert, hope to speed it along.

When they become a little more mature, software radios will be important tools in emergencies, for instance, by ensuring that police and firefighter walkie-talkies can communicate.

Currently, all radios perform signal processing--transmitting and receiving--via dedicated hardware. This dependence on hardware limits radio functions. For example, a fire chief using a walkie-talkie to contact the walkie-talkie carried by a policeman in a burning building has to hope that the two devices have the same type of dedicated hardware, Robert said.

As part of the school's Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group, Robert led development of a new tool called Open-Source Software Communication Architecture Implementation: Embedded, or OSSIE for short. Anyone can use OSSIE to program and operate a software radio.

If the firefighter had access to a software radio, he could load software he knew could communicate with the police device. In addition, the fire-fighter's software radio could communicate with a variety of other devices, such as cell phones, that also include the same software.

The Virginia Tech researchers have made OSSIE an open-source tool. Other researchers can download it free, but must share their own research findings.