Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / The use of older and slower protocols has become increasingly difficult to justify due to the rapid pace at which telecommunications are advancing. To keep up to date with the latest technologies, the communications system must be designed to accommodate the transparent insertion of new communications standards in all the stages of a system. The system should, however, also remain compatible with the older standards so as not to demand an upgrade of the older systems. The concept of a software defined radio was introduced to overcome these problems. In a software defined radio system, the functionality of the communications system is defined in software, which removes the the need for alterations to the hardware during technology upgrade. To maintain interoperatibilty, the system must be based on a standardised architecture. This would further allow for enhanced scalability and provide a plug-andplay feature for the components of the system. In this thesis, generic signal processing software components are developed to illustrate the creation of a basic software modem that can be parameterised to comply fully, or partially, to various standards.

Software radios have evolved as multimode, programmable digital radios that perform radio functions using digital signal processing algorithms. They have been designed as software programmable radios using a combination of various hardware elements and structures. In this dissertation a {em{soft radio}} refers to a completely configurable radio that can be programmed through software, to change the radio behavior including the hardware functionality. Conventional software radios achieve flexibility through software with the use of static hardware. While these radios have the flexibility to operate in multiple modes, the hardware is not used efficiently. This inefficient utilization of hardware frequently limits the flexibility of software radios and the number of modes the radio can support. Soft radios however, attempt to gain flexibility through the use of reconfigurable hardware. The same piece of hardware can be configured to perform different functions based on the mode the radio is operating in. While many soft/software radio architectures have been suggested and implemented, there remains a lack of a formal design methodology that can be used to design and implement reconfigurable soft radios. Most designs are based on ad hoc approaches which are appropriate only for the problem at hand. After examining the design issues of a soft radio an architecture, called the {em{Layered Radio Architecture}}, is developed with the use of stream based processing and run-time reconfigurable hardware. These choices aid in maximizing performance with minimum hardware while keeping the architecture robust, simple, and scalable. The reconfigurable platform enables {em hardware paging} through reusability hardware. The stream-based approach gives a uniform modular structure to the processing modules and defines the protocol for interaction between various modules. The architecture describes a formal yet open design methodology and makes it possible to incorporate all of the features of a software radio while minimizing complexity issues. The layered architecture also defines the methodology for incorporating changes and updates into the system. The layered radio architecture assumes run-time reconfigurability of the hardware. This feature is not supported by existing commercial reconfigurable hardware, like FPGAs. An Custom Computing Machine (CCM), called Stallion that supports fast run time reconfiguration, has been developed at Virginia Tech. This dissertation describes the deficiencies of existing commercial reconfigurable hardware and shows how the Stallion is capable of supporting the layered radio architecture. The dissertation presents algorithms and procedures that can be used to implement the layered radio architecture using existing hardware. The architecture is validated with the implementation of two receivers: A single user CDMA receiver based on complex adaptive filtering and a W-CDMA downlink rake receiver with channel estimation. Performance analysis of these receivers show that it is important to keep the paging ratio high while maximizing utilization of the processing elements. The layered radio architecture with the use of Stallion can support existing high data rate systems. / Ph. D.

Software radio is a radio that is substantially defined in software and whose physical layer behavior can be significantly altered through changes to its software. As a primary goal of software radio is the ability to support existing and future wireless protocols, software radio necessitates the use of a rapidly reprogrammable baseband processing solution. However third generation wireless protocols represent a significant increase in complexity over second generation protocols. Due to the natural performance sacrifices that must be made when moving an application from an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to a general purpose processor or a digital signal processor, it is feared that reprogrammable processing solutions may not suffice for the emerging wireless protocols, which would significantly hinder the realization of software radio, particularly in the handheld domain where power consumption and chip area are critical. Recently, the Configurable Computing Lab at Virginia Tech developed a new breed of reprogrammable processor which they called "custom computing machine" (CCM). Representing a dramatic departure from traditional architectures used for baseband processing solutions, CCMs utilize a large number of optimized and programmable processing cores connected through a programmable mesh. Due to this architectural approach, CCMs have been promoted as supplying a level of processing power and power efficiency similar to ASICs while providing a level of reconfigurability similar to that of a DSP. Subsequently, Dr. Srikathyayani Srikanteswara proposed a new software radio architecture, known as the Layered Radio Architecture, which is intended to facilitate the inclusion of CCMs into a software radio. The primary goal of the research presented in this thesis is to demonstrate how a particular CCM, Stallion, can be used within the Layered Radio Architecture to provide sufficient processing performance, power efficiency, and reconfigurability to meet the constraints of the handheld domain through implementations of a single user adaptive receiver with adaptive complex filtering and a W-CDMA downlink rake receiver. These metrics are measured from a detailed simulation of Stallion and the Configuration Layer of the Layered Radio Architecture using advanced object oriented programming techniques that facilitate the inclusion of statistics gathering routines into normal operation. To provide perspective, these statistics are compared to the performance that could be expected from an implementation on a top-of-the-line DSP. / Master of Science