Book excerpt: Next-generation mobile communications are likely to employ different techniques and standards. The implementation in software of as many receiver functionalities as possible appears to be the most effective solution for coping with the multiplicity of communications alternatives. The concept of software radio, dating back to 1991, originally attracted commercial interest owing to the possibility that transmission layer functions could be fully software-defined. The same approach can be extended to protocols of the higher layers too, thus conceiving a programmable hardware to implement the functionalities of several layers of protocols by resident software or software downloaded from the network. Consisting of selected technical contributions to the Workshop on "Software Radio", this volume deals with state-of-the-art surveys of the enabling technologies and the prospective services of software radio implementations for future mobile communications. Original and state-of-the-art research and development is presented in fields such as: - Software radio for universal wireless internet access - Software radio for multimedia communications - Software radio architecture - Network architecture, protocols and services - Software radio technology towards pervasive appliance. This volume on software radio is a valuable reference for both researchers and telecommunications professionals.