The digital modulators/demodulators demonstrators developed by CIRA according with the Software Define Radio (SDR) paradigm will be based on the HW platform, named GENIUS, whose first version is currently in the Lab test validation phase. The "basic" version of the platform was in-house developed within the PRO.R.A. funded project named TECVOL that aims at the development of technologies to support the autonomous flight. It is a trade off between requirements about the flexibility, to support the programming to of a wide variety of digital MODEMs; the modularity, to easy adapt to different HW configurations; and weight and size reduction to easy possible on board installation for the flight testing of the developed modems.

Commercial HW platforms used up to now for the validation of the in-house developed algorithms are the so called "evaluation boards" that if on one side show a large number of peripherals to adapt to the widest number of applications, on the other side, they are not particularly optimized in terms of weight, size, and power supply. The platform is a step forward towards the increase of the Technology Maturity Level (TRL) of the CIRA modem development. At the moment, it is made up of a FPGA-based board, equipped with several interfaces to the external world, and a power supply board. These two boards are then integrated with commercial radiofrequency boards to translate the baseband generated signal to the desired RF band and interface with the antenna.

An "enhanced" version of the GENIUS platform, including further functions, is planned by the end of 2018.