A wireless device that is reconfigurable via software. Software-defined radio enables wireless devices to be easily updated to new or later versions of the air interface, and it allows multiple interfaces to be supported. For example, a software-defined cellphone could be used in any country in the world.
"Cognitive radio" is a category of software-defined radio that senses its environment and changes signals in real time (see
cognitive radio). See
softphone and
software-defined networking.