Design of interfaces between high speed data converters and high performance FPGAs for software defined radio applications

Abstract

Software defined radio (SDR) is a vast and emerging field that requires the design of various technologies such as antenna, RF, IF, and digital baseband subsystems. Among all these technologies, data converters that convert signals between analog and digital domains are highly crucial. On the other hand field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) based platforms are being preferred for evaluating and implementing the digital communication concepts due to their programmability and reconfigurability. As a result they are well suited for the design of SDR technology. In this research work, we develop a platform where high-speed data converters are interfaced with high performance FPGAs. Interfaces are designed for analogto-digital convertors (ADC) and digital-to-analog convertors (DAC) to communicate with FPGAs. For the interface design between ADC and FPGA, a double data rate and a low voltage differential signalling based serial output is adopted. And, for the interface design between DAC and other FPGA, parallel complementary metal oxide semiconductor outputs are used. To reconfigure the modes and parameters of the data convertors, serial peripheral interface data controllers have been designed. We have through simulations evaluated the performance of our designed interfaces between data convertors and FPGAs.

Feasibility Test of Raspberry Pi Based Spectrum Analyzer and Transfer Level Register-Software Defined Radio as Learning Media for Frequency Measurement

“…This makes SDR a very versatile tool for performing analysis on the frequency spectrum and also allows programmers to use software to create cracking tools (Pozniak et al, 2019). For programmability and reconfiguration purposes, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are the platform of choice for implementing most SDR concepts (Balakrishnan et al, 2019). SDR processors are challenging to design because multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) links require tremendous processing power (Kultala et al, 2019).…”

A generation and distribution system of clock signal source for signal acquisition system

“…In a high‐speed acquisition system, the combination of the analog‐to‐digital converters (ADCs) or digital‐to‐analog converters (DACs) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is used to realized data acquisition and data processing 4–6 . The amount of real‐time data can reach up to tens of gigabyte per second (Gbps) in a high‐speed acquisition system.…”

“…In a high-speed acquisition system, the combination of the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) or digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is used to realized data acquisition and data processing. [4][5][6] The amount of real-time data can reach up to tens of gigabyte per second (Gbps) in a high-speed acquisition system. The JESD204B is a new high-speed serial protocol, whose transmission speed can reach to 12.5 Gbps, and would be a suitable choice for high-speed data transmission in the architecture of FPGA+ADC.…”

Decimator systolic arrays design space exploration for multirate signal processing applications

“…Decimators are used in multirate systems to generate signals with lower data rates. Examples where decimators are an essential component include finite impulse response (FIR) filters with steep transition band [3, 4], nested arrays broadband beamformers [5, 6], the baseband DSP of software‐defined radio (SDR) to enable configurable sample rates [7], the digital down converter of a fourth‐generation receiver systems [8], the digitally enhanced high‐speed analogue‐to‐digital converter for achieving higher signal‐to‐noise ratio in wireless and SDR applications [9, 10], the quadrature mirror filter for equalising wireless communications channels [11], and discrete Fourier transform (DFT) filter bank beamformers [12]. Decimators can also be found in other general areas such as radar [13–16], communications [17], speech [18, 19], and image processing [20, 21].…”