This article is part of the series Signal Processing with High Complexity: Prototyping and Industrial Design.

Open Access Research Article

Rapid Industrial Prototyping and SoC Design of 3G/4G Wireless Systems Using an HLS Methodology

Yuanbin Guo1*, Dennis McCain1, Joseph R Cavallaro2 and Andres Takach3

Author Affiliations

1 Nokia Networks Strategy and Technology, Irving, TX 75039, USA

2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA

3 Mentor Graphics, Portland, OR 97223, USA

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EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems 2006, 2006:014952  doi:10.1155/ES/2006/14952


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://jes.eurasipjournals.com/content/2006/1/014952


Received: 4 November 2005
Revisions received: 10 May 2006
Accepted: 22 May 2006
Published: 25 July 2006

© 2006 Guo et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Many very-high-complexity signal processing algorithms are required in future wireless systems, giving tremendous challenges to real-time implementations. In this paper, we present our industrial rapid prototyping experiences on 3G/4G wireless systems using advanced signal processing algorithms in MIMO-CDMA and MIMO-OFDM systems. Core system design issues are studied and advanced receiver algorithms suitable for implementation are proposed for synchronization, MIMO equalization, and detection. We then present VLSI-oriented complexity reduction schemes and demonstrate how to interact these high-complexity algorithms with an HLS-based methodology for extensive design space exploration. This is achieved by abstracting the main effort from hardware iterations to the algorithmic C/C++ fixed-point design. We also analyze the advantages and limitations of the methodology. Our industrial design experience demonstrates that it is possible to enable an extensive architectural analysis in a short-time frame using HLS methodology, which significantly shortens the time to market for wireless systems.

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