Configurable circuits for field programmable radio frequency communications equipment and methods therefor

A field configurable radio frequency communications system comprising:

• a radio frequency receiver for receiving radio frequency modulated signals, down converting the radio frequency signals to modulated intermediate frequency signals and converting the modulated intermediate frequency signals and a noise into multi-bit digital form;
• a digital demodulator circuit for receiving the modulated intermediate frequency multi-bit digital signals from the receiver and converting such signals to multi-bit baseband digital signals,
• a primary digital signal processing circuit for processing the multi-bit baseband signals comprising:
• a digital bus for receiving the multi-bit digital signals,
• a plurality of digital signal processing circuits connected to the bus, each digital processing circuit being responsive to digital commands received over the bus for setting the operating parameters of each of the plurality of digital processing circuits,
• a plurality of control registers connected to the bus and responsive to receiving configuration digital commands from the bus for configuring the interconnection of the multi-bit digital signal flow between the bus and selected ones of the plurality of digital signal processing circuits, for setting the operating parameters of each of the plurality of digital signal processing circuits, and for loading the configuration digital commands into the registers, and
• a control circuit connected to the bus and responsive to the receipt of configuration digital commands from the bus for transmitting the configuration digital commands to the control registers and for enabling the transfer of configuration digital commands from the control registers to each of the plurality of digital signal processing circuits to configure selected ones of the plurality of digital signal processing circuits and set the parameters thereof to process the multi-bit digital signals in accordance with the mode designated by the configuration digital commands received by the control circuit
• a digital modulator circuit for receiving multi-bit digital baseband signals from the primary digital signal processing circuit and converting such signals to multi-bit digital intermediate frequency signals
• a radio frequency transmitter for receiving multi-bit digital intermediate frequency signals from the digital modulator circuit, converting the multi-bit digital signals to analog form, up converting the analog signals to modulated radio frequency signal for transmission.