Design of an FFT/IFFT Processor for MIMO OFDM Systems

In this paper, we present a novel 128/64 point fast Fourier transform (FFT)/ inverse FFT (IFFT) processor for the applications in a multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing based IEEE 802.11n wireless local area network baseband processor. The unfolding mixed-radix multipath delay feedback FFT architecture is proposed to efficiently deal with multiple data sequences. The proposed processor not only supports the operation of FFT/IFFT in 128 points and 64 points but can also provide different throughput rates for 1-4 simultaneous data sequences to meet IEEE 802.11n requirements. Furthermore, less hardware complexity is needed in our design compared with traditional four-parallel approach. The proposed FFT/IFFT processor is designed in a 0.13-mum single-poly and eight-metal CMOS process. The core area is 660times2142 mum² , including an FFT/IFFT processor and a test module. At the operation clock rate of 40 MHz, our proposed processor can calculate 128-point FFT with four independent data sequences within 3.2 mus meeting IEEE 802.11n standard requirements     

数模同播音频广播系统中OFDM调制解调器的设计

设计了一种基于IFFT/FFT的高效OFDM调制解调器,实现数模同播音频广播系统中数字音频信号的OFDM调制解调,包括发射机中用于形成OFDM符号的时域与频域交织模块、OFDM调制模块和接收机中OFDM解调模块、时域与频域解交织模块。通过对IFFT/FFT算法的改进,该OFDM调制解调器中数据的输入顺序和输出顺序相同,不需要进行顺序输人逆序输出,并且可以把现有基2的幂次方的FFT变换扩展到任意点,实现适用于任意点的IFT/FFT,简化了IFFT/FFT模块本身和交织／解交织的资源消耗,巧妙地节省了系统所需的资源。     

A 1-GS/s FFT/IFFT processor for UWB applications

In this paper, we present a novel 128-point FFT/IFFT processor for ultrawideband (UWB) systems. The proposed pipelined FFT architecture, called mixed-radix multipath delay feedback (MRMDF), can provide a higher throughput rate by using the multidata-path scheme. Furthermore, the hardware costs of memory and complex multipliers in MRMDF are only 38.9% and 44.8% of those in the known FFT processor by means of the delay feedback and the data scheduling approaches. The high-radix FFT algorithm is also realized in our processor to reduce the number of complex multiplications. A test chip for the UWB system has been designed and fabricated using 0.18-/spl mu/m single-poly and six-metal CMOS process with a core area of 1.76/spl times/1.76 mm/sup 2/, including an FFT/IFFT processor and a test module. The throughput rate of this fabricated FFT processor is up to 1 Gsample/s while it consumes 175 mW. Power dissipation is 77.6 mW when its throughput rate meets UWB standard in which the FFT throughput rate is 409.6 Msample/s.     

Cost-Effective Triple-Mode Reconfigurable Pipeline FFT/IFFT/2-D DCT Processor

This investigation proposes a novel radix-4² algorithm with the low computational complexity of a radix-16 algorithm but the lower hardware requirement of a radix-4 algorithm. The proposed pipeline radix-4² single delay feedback path (R4²SDF) architecture adopts a multiplierless radix-4 butterfly structure, based on the specific linear mapping of common factor algorithm (CFA), to support both 256-point fast Fourier transform/inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT/IFFT) and 8times8 2D discrete cosine transform (DCT) modes following with the high efficient feedback shift registers architecture. The segment shift register (SSR) and overturn shift register (OSR) structure are adopted to minimize the register cost for the input re-ordering and post computation operations in the 8times8 2D DCT mode, respectively. Moreover, the retrenched constant multiplier and eight-folded complex multiplier structures are adopted to decrease the multiplier cost and the coefficient ROM size with the complex conjugate symmetry rule and subexpression elimination technology. To further decrease the chip cost, a finite wordlength analysis is provided to indicate that the proposed architecture only requires a 13-bit internal wordlength to achieve 40-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance in 256-point FFT/IFFT modes and high digital video (DV) compression quality in 8 times 8 2D DCT mode. The comprehensive comparison results indicate that the proposed cost effective reconfigurable design has the smallest hardware requirement and largest hardware utilization among the tested architectures for the FFT/IFFT computation, and thus has the highest cost efficiency. The derivation and chip implementation results show that the proposed pipeline 256-point FFT/IFFT/2D DCT triple-mode chip consumes 22.37 mW at 100 MHz at 1.2-V supply voltage in TSMC 0.13-mum CMOS process, which is very appropriate for the RSoCs IP of next-generation handheld devices.     

WIMAX系统中可配置FFT/IFFT的设计与实现

针对WIMAX系统中变长子载波的特点,通过采用流水线乒乓结构,以基2、基4混合基实现了高速可配置的FFT/IFFT。将不同点数的FFT旋转因子统一存储,同时对RAM单元进行优化,节约了存储空间;此外对基4蝶形单元进行优化,减少了加法和乘法运算单元。仿真和综合结果表明,设计满足了WIMAX高速系统中不同带宽下FFT/IFFT的要求。     

流水线结构FFT/IFFT处理器的设计与实现

针对实时高速信号处理的要求，设计并实现了一种高效的FFT处理器。在分析了FFT算法的复杂度和硬件实现结构的基础上，处理器采用了按频率抽取的基—4算法，分级流水线以及定点运算结构。可以根据要求设置成4P点的FFT或IFFT。处理器可以对多个输入序列进行连续的FFT运算，消除了数据的输入输出对延时的影响。平均每完成一次N点FFT运算仅需要Ⅳ个时钟周期。整个设计基于Verilog HDL语言进行模块化设计。并在Altera公司的Cyclone Ⅱ器件上实现。     

用于MB-OFDM UWB系统的FFT/IFFT处理器的设计与实现

设计了一种应用于超宽带(UWB)无线通信系统中的FFT/IFFT处理器。该处理器采用基24算法进行FFT运算,利用8路并入并出的流水线结构实现该算法,提高了处理器的数据吞吐率,降低了芯片功耗。提出了一种新颖的数据处理方式,在保证信噪比的情况下节约了逻辑资源。在乘法器的设计环节,针对UWB系统的具体特点,在结构上对乘法器进行了改进和优化,提高了乘法器的性能。最后,设计的FFT/IFFT处理器采用TSMC 0.18μm CMOS标准工艺库综合,芯片的内核面积为0.762mm2(不含测试电路)。在1.8V,25℃条件下,最大工作时钟317.199MHz,在UWB典型的工作频率下,内核功耗为33.5304mW。     

基于FPGA技术实现的OFDM基带调制系统

OFDM基带调制的目的是将高速的串行数据流转换成并行的低速数据流,再调制到频谱是正交重叠的子载波上进行传输,以便于提高频谱利用率。OFDM可以采用IFFT/FFT实现调制解调,在本设计中采用FPGA技术可以比较容易地实现OFDM通信系统的的调制器部分。整个系统包括RS编码、交织、QAM星座映射,IFFT和插入CP等模块,经过仿真验证:提高了系统的处理速度,具有较高的应用价值。     

A multi‐mode IFFT/FFT processor for IEEE 802.11ac: design and implementation

In this paper, we present 64/128/256/512‐point inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT)/FFT processor for single‐user and multi‐user multiple‐input multiple‐output orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing based IEEE 802.11ac wireless local area network transceiver. The multi‐mode processor is developed by an eight‐parallel mixed‐radix architecture to efficiently produce full reconfigurability for all multi‐user combinations. The proposed design not only supports the operation of IFFT/FFT for 1–8 different data streams operated by different users in case of downlink transmission, but also, it provides different throughput rates to meet IEEE 802.11ac requirements at the minimum possible clock frequency. Moreover, less power is needed in our design compared with traditional software approach. The design is carefully optimized to operate by the minimum wordlengths that fulfill the performance and complexity specifications. The processor is designed and implemented on Xilinx Vertix‐5 field programmable gate array technology. Although the maximum clock frequency is 377.84 MHz, the processor is clocked by the operating sampling rate to further reduce the power consumption. At the operation clock rate of 160 MHz, our proposed processor can calculate 512‐point FFT with up to eight independent data sequences within 3.2~μs meeting IEEE 802.11ac standard requirements. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Static quantised radix-2 fast Fourier transform (FFT)/inverse FFT processor for constraints analysis

This research work focuses on the design of a high-resolution fast Fourier transform (FFT)/inverse FFT (IFFT) processors for constraints analysis purpose. Amongst the major setbacks associated with such high-resolution FFT processors are the high-power consumption resulting from the structural complexity and computational inefficiency of floating-point calculations. As such, a parallel pipelined architecture was proposed to statically scale the resolution of the processor to suite adequate trade-off constraints. The quantisation was applied to provide an approximation to address the finite word-length constraints of digital signal processing. An optimum operating mode was proposed, based on the signal-to-quantisation-noise ratio (SQNR) as well as the statistical theory of quantisation, to minimise the trade-off issues associated with selecting the most application-efficient floating-point processing capability in contrast to their resolution quality.     

A reconfigurable 4-GS/s power-efficient floating-point FFT processor design and implementation based on single-sided binary-tree decomposition

This paper presents a high throughput size-configurable floating point (FP) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processor, having implemented the 8-parallel multi-path delay feedback (MDF) functions suitable for applications in the real-time radar imaging system. With regard to floating-point FFT design, to acquire a high throughput with restricted area and power consumptions poses as a greater challenge due to some higher degrees of complexity involved in realizing of FP operations than those fixed-point counterparts. To address the related issues, a novel mixed-radix FFT algorithm featuring the single-sided binary-tree decomposition strategy is proposed aiming at effectively containing the complexity of multiplications for any 2^k-point FFT. To this aid, the parallel-processing twiddle factor generator and the dual addition-and-rounding fused FP arithmetic units are optimized to meet the high accuracy demand in computation and the low power budget in implementation. The proposed FP FFT processor has been designed in silicon based on SMIC's 28 nm CMOS technology with the active area of 1.39 mm². The prototype design delivers a throughput of 4 GSample/s at 500 MHz, at a peak power consumption of 84.2 mW. Thus, the proposed design approach achieves a significant improvement in power efficiency approximately by 14 times on average over some other FP FFT processors previously reported.     

An Area Efficient FFT/IFFT Processor for MIMO-OFDM WLAN 802.11n

A pipelined Fast Fourier Transform and its inverse (FFT/IFFT) processor, which utilizes hardware resources efficiently, is proposed for MIMO-OFDM WLAN 802.11n. Compared with a conventional MIMO-OFDM implementation, (in which as many FFT/IFFT processors as the number of transmit/receive antennas is used), the proposed architecture (using hardware sharing among multiple data sequences) reduces hardware complexity without sacrificing system throughput. Further, the proposed architecture can support 1–4 input data sequences with sequence lengths of 64 or 128, as needed. The FFT/IFFT processor is synthesized using TSMC 0.18 um CMOS technology and saves 25% area compared to a conventional implementation approach using radix-2³ algorithm. The proposed FFT/IFFT processor can be configured to improve power efficiency according to the number of input data sequences and the sequence length. The processor consumes 38 mW at 75 MHz for one input sequence with 64-point length; it consumes 87 mW at 75 MHz for four input sequences with length 128-point and can be efficiently used for IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard.

多载波中的实数FFT及其离散Hartley变换实现

在OFDM／DMT多载波调制中，FFT为实数FFT（Real—Valued FFT），输入全部为实数，变换后的输出为偶函数即具有一定的共轭特性。相应地，IFFT为实数FFT的逆过程。实数FFT的实现与复数FFT具有很大的不同，文中提出了一种基于离散Hartley变换的实现方法，运算过程全部为实数过程，与复数FFT相比，所需的乘法、加法运算以及RAN的开销均大幅度降低。     

A DFT Technique for Testing High-Speed Circuits with Arbitrarily Slow Testers

This paper presents a design for testability (DFT) technique for testing high-speed circuits with a low-speed test mode clock. With this technique, the test mode clock frequency can be reduced with virtually no lower limit. Even with the reduced speed requirement on the automatic test equipment (ATE), our method facilitates the test of the rated-speed timing and allows performance binning. A CMOS implementation of the DFT hardware with 50 ps timing accuracy is presented. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique we designed a 16-bit, 1.4 GHz pipelined multiplier as a test vehicle. Simulations using a test clock frequency much lower than the rated clock frequency show that delay faults of sizes as small as 50 ps are detected and that the new test technique provides correct performance binning.     

A yield improvement technique in severe process,voltage, and temperature variations and extreme voltage scaling

Drastic yield reduction at sub/nearthreshold voltage domains, caused by the severe process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations in this region, is challenging characteristic of recent nanometre sensory chips. Using a variation sensitive and ultra-low-power design, this paper proposes a novel technique capable of sensing and responding to PVT variations by providing an appropriate forward body bias (FBB) so that the delay variations and timing yield of whole system as well as energy-delay product (EDP) are improved. Theoretical analysis for the error probability, confirmed by post-layout HSPICE simulations for an 8-bit Kogge–Stone adder and also two large Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processors, shows considerable improvements in severe PVT variations and extreme voltage scaling. For this adder, for example, the proposed technique can reduce error rate from 50% to 1% at 0.4 V. In another implementation, in average ∼7× delay variation and ∼4× EDP improvement is gained after this technique is applied to an iterative 1024pt, radix 4, complex FFT while working in sub/nearthreshold voltage region of 0.3 V–0.6 V. Also, pipelined version of the FFT consumed only 412pJ/FFT at 0.4 V while processing 125 K FFT/sec.     

FFT algorithms for prime transform sizes and their implementationson VAX, IBM3090VF, and IBM RS/6000

Variants of the Winograd fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm for prime transform size that offer options as to operational counts and arithmetic balance are derived. Their implementations on VAX, IBM 3090 VF, and IBM RS/6000 are discussed. For processors that perform floating-point addition, floating-point multiplication, and floating-point multiply-add with the same time delay, variants of the FFT algorithm have been designed such that all floating-point multiplications can be overlapped by using multiply-add. The use of a tensor product formulation, throughout, gives a means for producing variants of algorithms matching computer architectures     

基于FPGA的高速O-OFDM实时系统发送端信号处理

介绍了基于XI LI NX FPGA的1Gb/s光OFDM(O-OFDM)发送端信号处理的整体设计,对传输信号的星座映射及FFT进行了研究,重点分析了不同量化比特数时IFFT/FFT的误差矢量幅度(EVM),提出了使用不同量化比特对信号进行适当放大而提高系统的IFFT-FFT转换精度的方法。实验验证了OFDM信号I FFT-FFT变换后随量化比特数的增加,EVM值不断减少,相应的星座图更收敛。     

An Indexed-Scaling Pipelined FFT Processor for OFDM-Based WPAN Applications

In this brief, a high-throughput and low-complexity fast Fourier transform (FFT) processor for wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing communication systems is presented. A new indexed-scaling method is proposed to reduce both the critical-path delay and hardware cost by employing shorter wordlength. Together with the mixed-radix multipath delay feedback structure, the proposed FFT processor can achieve very high throughput with low hardware cost. From analysis, it is shown that the proposed indexed-scaling method can save at least 11% memory utilizations compared to other state-of-the-art scaling algorithms. Also, a test chip of a 1.2 Gsample/s 2048-point FFT processor has been designed using UMC 90-nm 1P9M process with a core area of 0.97 mm². The signal-to-quantization-noise ratio (SQNR) performance of this test chip is over 32.7 dB to support 16-QAM modulation and the power consumption is about 117 mW at 300 MHz. Compared to the fixed-point FFT processors, about 26% area and 28% power can be saved under the same throughput and SQNR specifications.     

A 64-point Fourier transform chip for high-speed wireless LAN application using OFDM

In this paper, we present a novel fixed-point 16-bit word-width 64-point FFT/IFFT processor developed primarily for the application in an OFDM-based IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN baseband processor. The 64-point FFT is realized by decomposing it into a two-dimensional structure of 8-point FFTs. This approach reduces the number of required complex multiplications compared to the conventional radix-2 64-point FFT algorithm. The complex multiplication operations are realized using shift-and-add operations. Thus, the processor does not use a two-input digital multiplier. It also does not need any RAM or ROM for internal storage of coefficients. The proposed 64-point FFT/IFFT processor has been fabricated and tested successfully using our in-house 0.25-/spl mu/m BiCMOS technology. The core area of this chip is 6.8 mm/sup 2/. The average dynamic power consumption is 41 mW at 20 MHz operating frequency and 1.8 V supply voltage. The processor completes one parallel-to-parallel (i.e., when all input data are available in parallel and all output data are generated in parallel) 64-point FFT computation in 23 cycles. These features show that though it has been developed primarily for application in the IEEE 802.11a standard, it can be used for any application that requires fast operation as well as low power consumption.     

VLSI design investigation for low-cost, low-power FFT/IFFT processing in advanced VDSL transceivers

The problem of an efficient very large scale integration (VLSI) realization of the direct/inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT/IFFT) for digital subscriber line (DSL) applications is addressed in this paper. The design of scalable and very high-rate (VDSL) modem claims for large and high-throughput complex FFT computations while for massive and fast deployment of the xDSL family low-cost and low-power constraints are key issues. Throughout the paper we explore the design space at different levels (algorithm, arithmetic accuracy, architecture, technology) to achieve the best trade-off between processing performance, hardware complexity and power consumption. A programmable VLSI processor based on a FFT/IFFT cascade architecture plus pre/post-processing stages is discussed and characterized from the high-level choices down to the gate-level synthesis. Furthermore low-power design techniques, based on clock gating and data driven switching activity reduction, are used to decrease the power consumption exploiting the correlation of the FFT/IFFT coefficients and the statistics of the input signals. To this aim both frequency-division and time-division duplex schemes have been considered. The effects of supply voltage scaling and its consequence on circuit performance are examined in detail, as well as the use of different target technologies. Synthesis results for a 0.18 μm CMOS standard-cells technology show that the processor is suitable for real-time modulation and demodulation in scalable full-rate VDSL modem (64-4096 complex FFT, 20 Msample/s) with a power consumption of few tens of mW. These performances are very interesting when compared to state-of-the-art software implementations and custom VLSI ones.