Adaptive DSP Algorithms for UMTS: Blind Adaptive MMSE and PIC Multiuser Detection

A study of the application of blind adaptive Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) and Parallel Interference Cancellation (PIC) multiuser detection techniques to Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), the physical layer of Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), has been performed as part of the Freeband Adaptive Wireless Networking project. This study was started with an analysis of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and conventional CDMA detection. After that blind adaptive MMSE and PIC detection have been analyzed for general CDMA systems. Then the differences between WCDMA and general CDMA were analyzed and the results have been used to determine how blind adaptive MMSE and PIC can be implemented in WCDMA systems. Blind adaptive MMSE has been implemented inWCDMASim, aWCDMA simulator and some preliminary simulation results obtained with this simulator are presented. These simulation results do not yet show the performance that was expected of blind adaptive MMSE detection based on simulation results obtained in previous research. The cause for these unexpected results is not yet known and will be the subject of further research.\ud Implementation of PIC detection in WCDMASim was found to require changes to the architecture of the WCDMASim simulator. Implementation of these changes and solving the problems with blind adaptive MMSE detection are considered for future work

Adjacent Channel Interference in UMTS Networks

One of the purposes of receive filtering in a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) handset receiver is to attenuate out-of-channel interference to provide channel selectivity. A UMTS handset receiver using a receive filter adaptive on out-of-channel interference level can be more computationally efficient than a handset with a fixed receive filter provided that the hand-set operates in low out-of-channel interference conditions often enough. The UMTS Adjacent Channel Selectivity (ACS) test case requires the adaptive receive filter to provide a worst case ACS of 33 dB. An adaptive receive filter is more computationally efficient than a fixed receive filter when the required ACS is less than 23 dB, because the added complexity of measuring the out-of-channel interference is compensated for by the reduction in the required number of filter taps to achieve the ACS. Measurements of the out-of-channel interference show that currently the interference levels for which the maximum ACS of 33 dB is required are hardly ever reached in practice. For the currently measured interference levels an adaptive receive filter will be computationally more efficient than a fixed\ud receive filter 97% of the time. However, the current out-of-channel interference measurements might be on the optimistic side, because the loads of the UMTS networks are low. When these loads increase in the future, the out-of-channel interference levels may increase and the advantage in computational efficiency of the adaptive receive filter will be reduced

Adaptive Wireless Networking

This paper presents the Adaptive Wireless Networking (AWGN) project. The project aims to develop methods and technologies that can be used to design efficient adaptable and reconfigurable mobile terminals for future wireless communication systems. An overview of the activities in the project is given. Furthermore our vision on adaptivity in wireless communications and suggestions for future activities are presented

Implementation of a Combined OFDM-Demodulation and WCDMA-Equalization Module

For a dual-mode baseband receiver for the OFDMWireless LAN andWCDMA standards, integration of the demodulation and equalization tasks on a dedicated hardware module has been investigated. For OFDM demodulation, an FFT algorithm based on cascaded twiddle factor decomposition has been selected. This type of algorithm combines high spatial and temporal regularity in the FFT data-flow graphs with a minimal number of computations. A frequency-domain algorithm based on a circulant channel approximation has been selected for WCDMA equalization. It has good performance, low hardware complexity and a low number of computations. Its main advantage is the reuse of the FFT kernel, which contributes to the integration of both tasks. The demodulation and equalization module has been described at the register transfer level with the in-house developed Arx language. The core of the module is a pipelined radix-23 butterfly combined with a complex multiplier and complex divider. The module has an area of 0.447 mm2 in 0.18 ¿m technology and a power consumption of 10.6 mW. The proposed module compares favorably with solutions reported in literature

Software modification aided transient error tolerance for embedded systems

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components are increasingly being employed in embedded systems due to their high performance at low cost. With emerging reliability requirements, design of these components using traditional hardware redundancy incur large overheads, time-demanding re-design and validation. To reduce the design time with shorter time-to-market requirements, software-only reliable design techniques can provide with an effective and low-cost alternative. This paper presents a novel, architecture-independent software modification tool, SMART (Software Modification Aided transient eRror Tolerance) for effective error detection and tolerance. To detect transient errors in processor datapath, control flow and memory at reasonable system overheads, the tool incorporates selective and non-intrusive data duplication and dynamic signature comparison. Also, to mitigate the impact of the detected errors, it facilitates further software modification implementing software-based check-pointing. Due to automatic software based source-to-source modification tailored to a given reliability requirement, the tool requires no re-design effort, hardware- or compiler-level intervention. We evaluate the effectiveness of the tool using a XentiumR processor based system as a case study of COTS based systems. Using various benchmark applications with single-event upset (SEUs) based error model, we show that up to 91% of the errors can be detected or masked with reasonable performance, energy and memory footprint overheads