Rapid FPGA Prototyping of a DAB Test Data Generator Using Protocol Compiler

Rapid FPGA Prototyping of a DAB Test Data Generator using Protocol Compiler Klaus Feske, Michael Scholz, Günther Döring, Mark Langer FhG IIS Erlangen Department EAS Dresden Zeunerstr. 38, D-01069 Dresden, Germany, e-mail: [email protected] 1 Motivation Conventionally, the controller design for structured data stream processing is not well supported by tools [SHM-96]. So, we are faced with a bottleneck in the design process especially for telecommunication applications. Therefore we checked the qualification of domain specific high level synthesis approaches [Sea-94, Syn-98, HoB-98] to improve the design productivity (Fig. 1). The paper deals with the design of a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) Test Data Generator (TDG) using an extended FPGA prototyping design flow. The TDG produces hierarchical structured data streams according to the DAB protocol. Based on this previous work [FRK-98] and first experiences in utilizing the Protocol Compiler [SDF-99] we outline high level modelling principles and related synthesis solutions in order to enhance efficiency in controller design and according to the requirements of the DAB test environment. 2 Requirements of our Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) Test Environment The digital radio system DAB is a broadband system, which transmits multiple programs in a common program block: the ensemble transport interface ETI (Fig. 2a). Digitized and preprocessed audio signals and data services are put together using a multiplexer (Fig. 2b). domain specific