A structured approach to waveform delivery for FPGA-based designs

Todaypsilas advanced MILSATCOM terminals depend heavily on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices to support the increased demands of above 2 GHz, high bandwidth high throughput (HBHT), high data rate (HDR) waveforms. One critical issue is that the delivery approach of FPGA-based waveforms is not standardized. However, the techniques developed by the Software Communications Architecture (SCA) for software defined radio (SDR) platforms to enable waveform porting on general purpose processor (GPP) devices can be extended to FPGA-based modem architectures. Leveraging existing SCA concepts, this paper advocates a structured approach to waveform delivery for FPGA-based designs. The MITRE Programmable Radio Technology (PRT) Laboratory demonstrated such an approach through the development, and delivery of a scalable and portable High Data Rate Radio Frequency (HDR-RF) Test Waveform. The proposed approach provides a structured delivery methodology that significantly reduces the risk of porting FPGA-based waveforms across SDR platforms.