Reconfigurable Homogenous Multi-Core FFT Processor Architectures for Hybrid SISO/MIMO OFDM Wireless Communications

Chin-Long WEY  Shin-Yo LIN  Pei-Yun TSAI  Ming-Der SHIEH  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E94-A    No.7    pp.1530-1539
Publication Date: 2011/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E94.A.1530
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: VLSI Design Technology and CAD
Keyword: 
reconfigurable,  fast Fourier transform (FFT),  homogeneous,  SISO/MIMO,  orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM),  

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Summary: 
Multi-core processors have been attracting a great deal of attention. In the domain of signal processing for communications, the current trends toward rapidly evolving standards and formats, and toward algorithms adaptive to dynamic factors in the environment, require programmable solutions that possess both algorithm flexibility and low implementation complexity. Reconfigurable architectures have demonstrated better tradeoffs between algorithm flexibility, implementation complexity, and energy efficiency. This paper presents a reconfigurable homogeneous memory-based FFT processor (MBFFT) architecture integrated in a single chip to provide hybrid SISO/MIMO OFDM wireless communication systems. For example, a reconfigurable MBFFT processor with eight processing elements (PEs) can be configured for one DVB-T/H with N=8192 and two 802.11n with N=128. The reconfigurable processors can perfectly fit the applications of Software Defined Radio (SDR) which requires more hardware flexibility.