An Overview of Reconfigurable Hardware for Efficient Implementation of DSP Algorithms

Reconfigurable hardware is emerging as the best option for the efficient implementation of complex and computationally expensive signal processing algorithms. Reconfigurable hardware exploits the benefit of high of computational efficiency of hardware as well as flexibility of software implementation. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which finds wide range of applications in the field of signal processing, wireless communication, image and video processing has gained popularity as a reconfigurable logic over past decade. In this paper, various hardware aspects of reconfigurable such as architectures and models including external coupling and run-time reconfigurable systems have been studied. Moreover, a case study of most widely used commercial FPGA technologies from Xilinx and upcoming three dimensional 3DFPGA architecture is presented. It is revealed that the reconfigurable hardware can be used in a variety of DSP applications. FPGA implementation of digital signal processing applications show enhanced outcome in terms of speed as compared to software implementation and previously reported architecture.