singletransmitter

Singletransmitter refers to a design approach in wireless and signal systems that centers on a single radio frequency transmitter to generate and distribute signals to one or more receivers. The concept can apply across contexts such as communications, telemetry, and sensing, and is often contrasted with multi-transmitter or distributed architectures where several transmitters coordinate to cover a region.

In a typical singletransmitter setup, the core chain includes a baseband modulator, upconverter, power amplifier, and RF filter. The transmitter output may feed a single antenna or be routed to an antenna array through switching networks or beamforming elements. If multiple users or directions must be served, separation and access are achieved through higher-layer multiplexing methods such as time-division, frequency-division, or code-division schemes, rather than by deploying multiple RF sources.

Common multiplexing approaches include TDMA, FDMA, and CDMA, each enabling one transmitter to serve multiple receivers under different temporal, spectral, or code allocations. In some designs, modest beam steering or fixed directional patterns can help improve coverage with a single RF chain, though this can limit global coverage and increase interference management challenges.

Applications of singletransmitter systems include low-cost IoT gateways, wireless sensor networks, RFID readers, and hobbyist or experimental radio setups where simplicity, compactness, and power efficiency are prioritized over the capacity gains of multi-transmitter solutions.

See also: MIMO, SISO, beamforming, software-defined radio.