Efficient implementation of 90 degrees phase shifter in FPGA

In this article, we present an efficient way of implementing 90 phase shifter using Hilbert transformer with canonic signed digit (CSD) coefficients in FPGA. It is implemented using 27-tap symmetric finite impulse response (FIR) filter. Representing the filter coefficients by CSD eliminates the need for multipliers and the filter is implemented using shifters and adders/subtractors. The simulated results for the frequency response of the Hilbert transformer with infinite precision coefficients and CSD coefficients agree with each other. The proposed architecture requires less hardware as one adder is saved for the realization of every negative coefficient compared to convectional CSD FIR filter implementation. Also, it offers a high accuracy of phase shift

Large-Scale MIMO Detection for 3GPP LTE: Algorithms and FPGA Implementations

Large-scale (or massive) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is expected to be one of the key technologies in next-generation multi-user cellular systems, based on the upcoming 3GPP LTE Release 12 standard, for example. In this work, we propose - to the best of our knowledge - the first VLSI design enabling high-throughput data detection in single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA)-based large-scale MIMO systems. We propose a new approximate matrix inversion algorithm relying on a Neumann series expansion, which substantially reduces the complexity of linear data detection. We analyze the associated error, and we compare its performance and complexity to those of an exact linear detector. We present corresponding VLSI architectures, which perform exact and approximate soft-output detection for large-scale MIMO systems with various antenna/user configurations. Reference implementation results for a Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7VX980T FPGA show that our designs are able to achieve more than 600 Mb/s for a 128 antenna, 8 user 3GPP LTE-based large-scale MIMO system. We finally provide a performance/complexity trade-off comparison using the presented FPGA designs, which reveals that the detector circuit of choice is determined by the ratio between BS antennas and users, as well as the desired error-rate performance.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processin

Digital signal processing: the impact of convergence on education, society and design flow

Design and development of real-time, memory and processor hungry digital signal processing systems has for decades been accomplished on general-purpose microprocessors. Increasing needs for high-performance DSP systems made these microprocessors unattractive for such implementations. Various attempts to improve the performance of these systems resulted in the use of dedicated digital signal processing devices like DSP processors and the former heavyweight champion of electronics design – Application Specific Integrated Circuits. The advent of RAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays has changed the DSP design flow. Software algorithmic designers can now take their DSP algorithms right from inception to hardware implementation, thanks to the increasing availability of software/hardware design flow or hardware/software co-design. This has led to a demand in the industry for graduates with good skills in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This paper evaluates the impact of technology on DSP-based designs, hardware design languages, and how graduate/undergraduate courses have changed to suit this transition

Novel sparse OBC based distributed arithmetic architecture for matrix transforms

Inner product (IP) forms the basis of a number of signal processing algorithms and applications such as transforms, filters, communication systems etc. Distributed arithmetic (DA) provides an effective methodology to implement IP of vectors and matrices using a simple combination of memory elements, adders and shifters instead of lumped multipliers. This bit level rearrangement results in much higher computational efficiencies and yields compact designs highly suited for high performance resource constrained applications. Offset binary coding (OBC) is an effective technique to further optimize the DA, and allows us to reduce the memory requirements by a factor of two, with minimum additional computational complexity. This makes OBC-DA attractive for applications that are both resource and memory constrained. In addition, sparse matrix factorization techniques can be exploited to further reduce the size of the DA-ROMs. In this paper, the design and implementation of a novel OBC based DA is demonstrated using a generic architecture for implementing discrete orthogonal transforms (DOTs). Implementation is performed on the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro field programmable gate array (FPGA), and a detailed comparison between conventional and OBC based DA is presented to highlight the trade offs in various design metrics including performance, area and power

Improving reconfigurable systems reliability by combining periodical test and redundancy techniques: a case study

This paper revises and introduces to the field of reconfigurable computer systems, some traditional techniques used in the fields of fault-tolerance and testing of digital circuits. The target area is that of on-board spacecraft electronics, as this class of application is a good candidate for the use of reconfigurable computing technology. Fault tolerant strategies are used in order for the system to adapt itself to the severe conditions found in space. In addition, the paper describes some problems and possible solutions for the use of reconfigurable components, based on programmable logic, in space applications