FPGAs Boost Performance Levels of Wideband Digital Receivers

FPGAs Boost Performance Levels of Wideband Digital Receivers Few component technologies have evolved as rapidly in the last few years as FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays). In this highly competitive market, each new generation of devices delivers faster speeds, improved density, larger memory resources, and more flexible interfaces. Totally new resources, such as dedicated hardware multiplier blocks and complete processor cores, also appear. Specifically, hardware multipliers have afforded FPGAs a strategic entry into DSP applications like software radio, where they are now challenging both ASICs and programmable DSPs. Initially competing for specialized architectures for digital receivers, the latest FPGAs can now outperform ASICs for the data processing demands of the new wideband communications standards. However, coaxing these new devices to handle higher sampling rates requires careful allocation and deployment of FPGA resources.