How to Design and Implement Resource Optimal SDR Front-ends

Future wireless systems demands high data rates, significantly reduced costs and support for multiple air-interfaces and modulation formats. For example, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a special form of multicarrier transmission where all the subcarriers are orthogonal to each other and which promises a higher user data rate transmission capability at a reasonable complexity and precision. It also stands a good chance to become the prime access technology for 4G systems. Advanced interoperability demands a radio that is flexible such that it can be tuned to any frequency and operates any modulation scheme. Such radios are normally identified as Software Defined Radios (SDR). To achieve the required SDR flexibility, most of the data processing is moved to the digital domain through shifting the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) as close to the antenna as possible, thus processing the data digitally on programmable and reconfigurable hardware. This PhD project targets advanced digital signal processing techniques and methodologies for SDR front-ends, in particular multirate signal processing methods which specify new ways of performing DSP tasks not available to traditional DSP designs. The expected outcome is a set of design guidelines/ paradigms for innovative DSP techniques/methods to be used for highly resource and energy efficient and reduced cost solutions for SDR front-ends using heterogeneous HW/SW platforms, e.g., FPGA and programmable processor.