Scaling FPGA Systems for Software Radio

With the drive for software defined radio systems, FPGAs are playing a key role in handling the higher data rates to and from the analog front end of these systems. Furthermore, basestations are handling ever increasing channel numbers and the algorithm complexity is also continuing to increase. Traditionally systems scalability was achieved using farms of processors, associated with these, operating systems would provide the communication framework for managing system communication. The advent of FPGAs offers the capability to have a more flexible and powerful software defined radio. However the system architecture has fundamentally changed when FPGAs are used. When scaling a system based on FPGAs, operating systems running on processors become inappropriate and new mechanisms and tools are required to maximise the capability of the FPGA while enabling the systems engineer to have the communications tools to create the appropriate systems architecture. This presentation will look at how scalable FPGA systems can be created and link this to how it is used within software defined radio systems, this will look at multi-channel systems ranging from multiple single antenna channels to multi-antenna array applications such as smart antenna arrays.