CIF: Small: Efficient Hardware For Complex Communications Processors

通信系统正变得越来越普遍，出现在各种各样的应用中，例如：移动电话、互联网、嵌入式系统和医疗设备。随着系统变得越来越复杂，对处理器计算复杂工作负载的需求也在增加，原因如下：数据吞吐率的大幅提高，以及复杂系统中所需的计算任务变得越来越复杂和大量。与此同时，由于需要电池供电的便携性增加等趋势，对功耗的要求变得越来越严格。该项目的目标是研究，设计和实现利用复杂通信系统的新算法和架构的数字处理器。将研究各种实现架构中的处理器，包括：专用处理器和多核阵列。三种复杂的工作负载是许多现代通信系统的关键组成部分：软件定义无线电（sdr）、低密度奇偶校验（LDPC）解码器和多输入多输出（MIMO）相关处理。这项研究的结果有望实现以前不可能实现的新应用功能。从该项目中吸取的经验教训将用于两门本科课程和一门研究生课程。PI活跃在几个校园范围内和全国性的组织中，这些组织致力于吸引和留住代表性不足的群体的成员从事研究并完成科学和工程的研究生学位。研究工作和结果将有助于在设计未来通信系统方面对未来科学家和工程师进行跨学科培训。

Communications systems are becoming increasingly commonplace and appear in a vast variety of applications such as: mobile phones, the internet, embedded systems, and medical devices. As systems become more sophisticated, the demands on processors to compute complex workloads also increase for several reasons: large increases in data throughput rates, and the computational tasks required in a sophisticated system become more complex and more numerous. At the same time, power dissipation demands are becoming ever more stringent due to trends such as increased portability requiring battery-powered operation. The objective of this project is to study, design and implement digital processors that utilize novel algorithms and architectures for complex communications systems. Processors across a wide variety of implementation architectures will be examined including: dedicated-purpose processors and many-core arrays. Three complex workloads which are critical components of many modern communications systems will be studied: software-defined-radios (SDRs), Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) decoders, and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) related processing.Results of this research are expected to enable new application capabilities that were previously not possible. Lessons learned from the project will be deployed in two undergraduate courses and one graduate course. The PI is active in several campus-wide and national organizations that work to attract and retain members of under-represented groups to engage in research and complete graduate degrees in science and engineering. Research effort and results will be instrumental in the cross-disciplinary training of future scientists and engineers in the design of future communications systems.