A frame-based domain-specific language for rapid prototyping of FPGA-based software-defined radios

作者：Ouedraogo Ganda Stephane; Gautier Matthieu^*; Sentieys Olivier

来源：EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 2014, 2014(1): 164.

DOI：10.1186/1687-6180-2014-164

• Software-defined radio (SDR)
• Field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
• Domain-specific language (DSL)
• High-level synthesis (HLS)

The field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology is expected to play a key role in the development of software-defined radio (SDR) platforms. As this technology evolves, low-level designing methods for prototyping FPGA-based applications did not change throughout the decades. In the outstanding context of SDR, it is important to rapidly implement new waveforms to fulfill such a stringent flexibility paradigm. At the current time, different proposals have defined, through software-based approaches, some efficient methods to prototype SDR waveforms in a processor-based running environment. This paper describes a novel design flow for FPGA-based SDR applications. This flow relies upon high-level synthesis (HLS) principles and leverages the nascent HLS tools. Its entry point is a domain-specific language (DSL) which handles the complexity of programming an FPGA and integrates some SDR features so as to enable automatic waveform control generation from a data frame model. Two waveforms (IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11a) have been designed and explored via this new methodology, and the results are highlighted in this paper.

• 出版日期2014-11-18
• 单位INRIA