Hardware-accelerated prototyping, characterization and optimization of multiple-antenna communication transmitters and receivers

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The main objective of the proposed research programme is to develop, extend and demonstrate a methodology for using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to greatly accelerate the simulation of wireless communication systems. The designers of multiple-antenna wireless communication systems face a rapidly escalating challenge where the designs of proposed transmitters and receivers must be verified and optimized over a wide range of posssible design configurations and wireless channel conditions. The performance of each candidate design must be verified using long-running simulations with pseudorandomly generated data communicated over realistic but complex models of the wireless channel. To ensure statistically meaningful bit and and symbol error rate (BER and SER) measurements, the simulated communication systems must process an extremely large number of transmitted data bits. This situation is made worse by the use of powerful error correcting codes, such as Turbo codes, which further reduce the effective BER and SER for the same channel conditions and hence lengthen the required simulations. Consequently conventional software-based simulations can easily take many days and even weeks of time on even the fastest computer workstations. The proposed research program investigates the use of hardware emulators, implemented as synthesized circuits on FPGAs, to accelerate the simulation of baseband wireless systems by several orders of magnitude. The resulting simulation times will be much less than the times required using conventional software-based simulation models on computer workstations. With the FPGA-accelerated prototyping methodology, the performance of proposed wireless systems can be measured and verified much faster over a larger number of possible scenarios. The hardware-accelerated simulation methodology should allow manufacturers to better verify and optimize the much more complex, upcoming wireless products before the designs are finalized, and then bring them to market faster and with a greater chance of success than would otherwise be possible.