Software radio terminals must be able to process many various communication
s standards. These standards are generally based on different master clock
rates and thus employ different bit/chip rates. The most obvious solution t
o cope with the diversity of master clock rates in one terminal is to provi
de a dedicated master clock for each standard of operation. Not only too co
stly, this kind of solution limits the applicability of a realized terminal
. Hence, it is much more elegant to run the terminal on a fixed clock rate,
and perform digital sample rate conversion controlled by software.