A case study of mapping a software-defined radio (SDR) application on a reconfigurable DSP core

Abstract

We present a case study involving the implementation of a complete Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) digital receiver part of an AMR channel onto a reconfigurable core. WCDMA is one of the two major standards for the third generation (3G) cellular systems. Traditionally most of the receiver components were confined to ASIC implementation for performance, size and power consumption reasons. The MS1 reconfigurable DSP core provides both a microprocessor and reconfigurable fabric as well as a variety of peripherals. The various functions of the receiver were mapped onto different core components. The complete system was tested both in simulation as well as on a hardware platform comprising a silicon implementation of the MS1 DSP core.