Depending on the frequency band (i.e. not terahertz), it's not that hard to make an arbitrary digital signal encoder that produces an analog signal, after a little bit of filtering. For instance, it's common enough to do audio by wigging a single bit and then passing that through a low-pass filter.
If they're claiming to do it without ANY analog hardware, then I call BS. However, there is filtering inherent in the digital circuits. I could imagine using a genetic programming to learn code sequences that produced desired signals as basically cross talk. However, process variation could really muck with that.
As for receiving, that's not too hard either. Say you want to receive a wide band of frequencies. You can make a band-pass filter in the analog and convert that to digital using an ADC. Once in the digital domain, you can separate the channels using fourier analysis or Taylor series.
Not that hard to make digital radio (Score:2)
Depending on the frequency band (i.e. not terahertz), it's not that hard to make an arbitrary digital signal encoder that produces an analog signal, after a little bit of filtering. For instance, it's common enough to do audio by wigging a single bit and then passing that through a low-pass filter.
If they're claiming to do it without ANY analog hardware, then I call BS. However, there is filtering inherent in the digital circuits. I could imagine using a genetic programming to learn code sequences that produced desired signals as basically cross talk. However, process variation could really muck with that.
As for receiving, that's not too hard either. Say you want to receive a wide band of frequencies. You can make a band-pass filter in the analog and convert that to digital using an ADC. Once in the digital domain, you can separate the channels using fourier analysis or Taylor series.