By Assad Saleem

1. Weekly Group Meeting14-05-2008Project: Software Defined Radio Development using Network-On-Chip based Rapid Prototyping Platform By Assad Saleem

2. Agenda • B-2 Development Methodology

3. Development Methodology • Many options to implement the SDR • The option we‘ll pursue is the : “NOC based prototyping platform that integrate highly reconfigurable Kernels” Figure-8: Architectural options to implement the SDR

4. Development Methodology • Research Contents • Analysis of the Application Domains and definition of kernels, • Defining and architecting the REXAPP architecture and the kernels, and • The methodology for mapping applications to the REXAPP architecture.

5. Development Methodology • Application Domains (AD) “Sets of sequences of signal processing transformations that have a high degree of commonality in their functionality but not necessarily in their dimension” - Radio access methods (TDMA, CDMA, OFDM), modeling of impairments in RF front end, PA linearization, Channel Modeling, Smart Antenna Engineering, MIMO Systems, Cognitive Radio - Our Focus: 4G, and Smart Antennas technologies as proof of concepts Kernels “Realization of above mentioned transformations”

6. Development Methodology Kernels - primary building blocks - not the optimal choice to cover an entire AD - such parts that are hard to realize as a reconfigurable kernel will be realized by arbitrary algorithms using secondary building blocks like FPGAs or ASIPs

7. Development Methodology b) REXAPP architecture and Kernels • Reconfigurability & scalability of kernels => able to host widely varying requirements of transformations in a Domain • If this is not possible using one kernel => define more than one to cover the breadth of variations

8. Development Methodology b) REXAPP architecture and Kernels Figure-9(a): Conceptual view of a NOC tile

9. Development Methodology b) REXAPP architecture and Kernels Figure 9(b): An example REXAPP System

10. Development Methodology • REXAPP Complier: This is the principal component that will be developed in this project • It’ll have access to a database of Kernels and NOC templates • Database format and the Kernels will be developed within this project • NOC template has been developed at KTH and continues to evolve and is not part of this project.

11. Development Methodology • Kernels and NOC Templates Database: • Exact format will be decided during execution phase • Plan to use existing XML based international standards like SPIRIT • For efficiency, these XML based representations are very likely to be translated to binary format

12. Development Methodology c) REXAPP methodology flow Figure-10: REXAPP Methodology Flow

13. Development Methodology • REXAPP Complier: will generate three outputs • An RTL model meant for logic synthesis followed by physical synthesis => to generate the actual physical design in GDSII format • Transaction level model => fast and efficient simulation to compare the functional properties of NOC based implementation against the original Matlab model • Cycle accurate simulation model => accurate performance measures with back-annotation from the detailed physical design => to do detailed timing analysis to check the performance and possible fine tune the architecture and mapping policies

14. Thank You.