Abstract

The physical (PHY) layer of next generation wireless systems requires a high degree of flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing wireless environment. Furthermore, concepts like cognitive radio and software defined radio greatly change the hardware architecture, in that the device is no longer fixed in function but rather a highly programmable substrate, providing fine-grained control over the signal processing components. This is more challenging for modern wireless waveforms like Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) that operate with many tunable parameters for optimum link performance. This is of much interest to the broader community of wireless networking research as well.

In this talk, I will present the design and architecture of a flexible OFDM transceiver and provide examples of novel MAC -PHY crosslayer techniques using this programmable prototype platform. By utilizing foundational knowledge of signal processing algorithms, a complete OFDM transceiver has been realized on commodity FPGA . The talk will also extend this idea to include methods of declarative representation of the PHY to target heterogeneous processing platforms and architectural choices for collaboration of cognitive radios at the PHY layer.