Abstract
This work investigates several approaches for implementing the OFDM functions of the fixed-WiMax standard on reconfigurable platforms. In the first phase, a custom RTL approach, using VHDL, is investigated. The approach shows the capability of a medium-size FPGA to accommodate the OFDM functions of a fixed-WiMax transceiver with only 50% occupation rate. In the second phase, a high-level approach based on the AccelDSP tool is used and compared to the custom RTL approach. The approach presents an easy flow to transfer MATLAB floating-point code into synthesizable cores. The AccelDSP approach shows an area overhead of 10%, while allowing early architectural exploration and accelerating the design time by a factor of two. However, the performance figure obtained is almost 1/4 of that obtained in the custom RTL approach. In the third phase, the Tensilica Xtensa configurable processor is targeted, which presents remarkable figures in terms of power, area, and design time. Comparing the three approaches indicates that the custom RTL approach has the lead in terms of performance. However, both the AccelDSP and the Tensilica Xtensa approaches show fast design time and early architectural exploration capability. In terms of power, the obtained estimation results show that the configurable Xtensa processor approach has the lead, where approximately the total power consumed is about 12--15 times less than those results obtained by the other two approaches.
- }}Andrews, J., Ghosh, A., and Muhamed, R. 2007. Fundamentals of WiMAX: Understanding Broadband Wireless Networking. Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Google ScholarDigital Library
- }}Areibi, S. 2008. Homepage. http://www.uoguelph.ca/sareibi.Google Scholar
- }}Baek, J., Kim, S., and Sunwoo, M. 2008. Spocs: Application specific signal processor for OFDM communication systems. J. Signal Process. Syst. 53, 3, 383--397. Google ScholarDigital Library
- }}Chen, Y., Lin, D. W., and Wu, C. 2005. DSP software implementation and integration of IEEE 802.16 TDD-OFDMA-mode downlink transceiver functions. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Communications (ISCOM’05). 124--127.Google Scholar
- }}Eberle, W., Derudder, V., and et al. 2001. 80-mb/s qpsk and 72-mb/s 64-qam flexible and scalable digital OFDM transceiver asics for wireless local area netwroks in the 5-GHz band. IEEE J. Solid-State Circ. 36, 1829--1838.Google ScholarCross Ref
- }}Garcia, J. and Cumplido, R. 2005. On the design of an FPGA-based OFDM modulator for IEEE 802.16-2004. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig’05). IEEE Computer Society, 22. Google ScholarDigital Library
- }}Hanson, J. and McNamara, B. 2005. Cost-Effectively implementing 802.16 SDR using software-configurable architectures. Tech. rep., Stretch Inc.Google Scholar
- }}Iancu, D., Ye, H., et al. 2006. Software implementation of WiMax on the sandbridge sandblaster platform. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Systems, Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation (SAMOS’06). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4017. Springer, 435--446. Google ScholarDigital Library
- }}IEEE. 2004. IEEE standard for local and metropolitan area netwroks, Part16: Air interface for fixed broadband wireless access systems. IEEE.Google Scholar
- }}IEEE. 2006. IEEE standard for local and metropolitan area netwroks, Part16: Air interface for fixed and mobile broadband wireless access systems. IEEE.Google Scholar
- }}Jiang, H., Luo, H., Tian, J., and Song, W. 2005. Design of an efficient FFT processor for OFDM systems. IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron. 51, 1099--1103. Google ScholarDigital Library
- }}Lattice. 2005. Implementation of an OFDM wireless transceiver using IP cores on an FPGA. Tech. rep., Lattice Semiconductor Corporation.Google Scholar
- }}Sghaier, A., Areibi, S., and Dony, B. 2008a. IEEE 802.16-2004 OFDM functions implementation on FPGAs with design exploration. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications.Google Scholar
- }}Sghaier, A., Areibi, S., and Dony, B. 2008b. A pipelined implementation of OFDM transmission on reconfigurable platforms. In Proceedings of the 21st Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE’08). 801--804.Google Scholar
- }}Son, B. S., Jo, B. G., Sunwoo, M. H., and Kim, Y. S. 2002. A high-speed FFT processor for OFDM systems. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Ststems 3. III--281--III--284.Google Scholar
- }}Tang, Y., Qian, L., and Wang, Y. 2005. Optimized software implementation of a full-rate IEEE 802.11a compliant digital baseband transmitter on a digital signal processor. In Proceedings of the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference. 2194--2198.Google Scholar
- }}Tensilica. 2008. Homepage. http://www.tensilica.com.Google Scholar
- }}Xilinx. 2008. Homepage. http://www.xilinx.com.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Implementation Approaches Trade-Offs for WiMax OFDM Functions on Reconfigurable Platforms
Recommendations
The microarchitecture of FPGA-based soft processors
CASES '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international conference on Compilers, architectures and synthesis for embedded systemsAs more embedded systems are built using FPGA platforms, there is an increasing need to support processors in FPGAs. One option is the soft processor, a programmable instruction processor implemented in the reconfigurable logic of the FPGA. Commercial ...
VESPA: portable, scalable, and flexible FPGA-based vector processors
CASES '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on Compilers, architectures and synthesis for embedded systemsWhile soft processors are increasingly common in FPGA-based embedded systems, it remains a challenge to scale their performance. We propose extending soft processor instruction sets to include support for vector processing. The resulting system of ...
A Reconfigurable Parallel Hardware Implementation of the Self-Tuning Regulator
The self-tuning regulator (STR) is a popular adaptive control algorithm. A high-performance computer is required for its implementation due to the heavy online computational burden. To extend STR for more real-time applications, a parallel hardware ...
Comments