Behnaam Aazhang, ECE Department, Rice University
Chris Dick, Xilinx Corporation

Tools & Techniques for Digital Communications Using FPGAs

Developing advanced military and commercial wireless communication systems presents many challenges in terms of business models, market drivers, application overlays and computational issues related to high data rates, advanced channel coding and spatial processing. Delivering flexible, future-proof, scalable hardware to the market will require a new way of thinking about system design and partitioning, especially with respect to the device technologies that are utilized to service the multimedia and physical layer aspects of the system. New generation systems demand arithmetic resourcing measured in the Tera- to Peta-op region. These considerations, in combination with the engineering challenges associated with building 90- and 65-nm silicon, require a new way to think about system deployment.

Now is the time to re-think traditional approaches to real-time high-performance signal processing. Software-defined radio (SDR) concepts are on a rapid evolutionary path toward satisfying the significant, and some times conflicting, requirements of military and commercial communication systems.

This session provides an overview of how FPGAs are used to deliver system solutions for communication platforms. An overview of the latest generation Virtex-4 technology will be provided with a focus on how to best leverage this technology for high-performance real-time signal processing. Simulink® extensions for generating embedded hardware will be described. Participants will develop an implementation of a 16-QAM modulator and verify functionality on an FPGA testbed.

 
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
1:15p.m. - Abercrombie Labs A123
Rice University



ECE Affiliates Meeting - Afternoon Session



Last modified: October 10, 2005