Instruction set extensions for software defined radio on a multithreaded processor

Abstract

Software defined radios, which provide a programmable solution for implementing the physical layer processing of multiple communication standards, are widely recognized as one of the most important new technologies for wireless communication systems. Emerging communication standards, however, require tremendous processing capabilities to perform high-bandwidth physical-layer processing in real time.In this paper, we present instruction set extensions for several important communication algorithms including convolutional encoding, Viterbi decoding, turbo decoding, and Reed-Solomon encoding and decoding. The performance benefits of these extensions are evaluated using a supercomputer class vectorizing compiler and the Sandblaster lowpower multithreaded processor for software defined radio. The proposed instruction set extensions provide significant performance improvements, while maintaining a high degree of programmability.

Instructions and hardware designs for accelerating SNOW 3G on a software-defined radio platform

“…The platform contains four Sandblaster TM DSP cores, an ARM TM processor, and input and output peripherals found on many wireless handheld devices. Each Sandblaster TM core has eight hardware threads and uses a form of interleaved multi-threading (IMT) known as token-triggered threading (T 3 ) [2].…”

“…SDRs enable the efficient implementation of a diverse set of wireless communication systems using software, instead of hardware blocks, for each protocol. SDRs also provide the ability to change communication protocols and dynamically update communication systems through over-the-air software downloads [2].…”

Instruction set extensions for the advanced encryption standard on a multithreaded software defined radio platform

“…SDRs enable the efficient implementation of a diverse set of wireless communication systems by providing the ability to change communication protocols and dynamically update communications systems through over-theair software downloads [14]. Thus, SDRs can easily adapt to emerging standards.…”