Feasibility of SDR for satellite broadcasting

Abstract

The results of a study are presented, showing the feasibility of porting a receiver solution for the digital TV standard DVB-SH onto a particular multi-core Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform, consisting of several clusters of SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) cores. Under the aspect of different DVB-SH modes (data rates, TDM/ OFDM, single- / multi-antenna, etc.) which have to be supported, we present cycle and memory estimates and propose possibilities to distribute the algorithmic blocks to the multi-core architecture. We also present theoretical aspects for algorithm design for this specific kind of SDR hardware. The algorithms have to be as regular as possible, in the sense that large data blocks can be processed without the need for special treatment of parts of the data. This problem is illustrated at the example of OFDM channel estimation, where the original receiver performs special treatment at two points. We propose ways to drop / replace these exceptions and examine the resulting performance loss. Simulation results will be presented and discussed