Area, speed and power measurements of FPGA-based complex orthogonal space-time block code channel encoders

Abstract

Space-time coding (STC) is an important milestone in modern wireless communications. In this technique, more copies of the same signal are transmitted through different antennas (space) and different symbol periods (time), to improve the robustness of a wireless system by increasing its diversity gain. STCs are channel coding algorithms that can be readily implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device. This work provides some figures for the amount of required FPGA hardware resources, the speed that the algorithms can operate and the power consumption requirements of a space-time block code (STBC) encoder. Seven encoder very high-speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) designs have been coded, synthesised and tested. Each design realises a complex orthogonal space-time block code with a different transmission matrix. All VHDL designs are parameterisable in terms of sample precision. Precisions ranging from 4 bits to 32 bits have been synthesised. Alamouti's STBC encoder design [Alamouti, S.M. (1998), 'A Simple Transmit Diversity Technique for Wireless Communications', IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 16:55-108.] proved to be the best trade-off, since it is on average 3.2 times smaller, 1.5 times faster and requires slightly less power than the next best trade-off in the comparison, which is a 3/4-rate full-diversity 3Tx-antenna STBC.

The effect of structural design parameters on FPGA-based feed-forward space-time trellis coding-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing channel encoders

“…A complete description of the Xilinx FPGA CAD design flow is illustrated in Figure 7 and is described in more detail in Passas, Freear and Fawcett (2010). The figure shows all design steps from code editing and functional testing down to downloading the code into a real FPGA hardware.…”

Fading model for antenna array receiver for a ring-type cluster of scatterers

“…Kohli Hui and Wang (2010) have emphasised on the requirement of accurate channel modelling encompassing antenna characteristics in the presence of scatterers, which is the backbone of the space-time block coding (STBC) based on MIMO technique for the reliable high data rate wireless transmissions (Passas, Freear, and Fawcett 2010). The performance evaluation of STBC code division multiple access system (Yu, Dong, Xu, and Bi 2010) in the presence of a ring-type cluster of scatterers is under investigation.…”