Implementation of OFDM modem for the physical layer of IEEE 802.11a standard based on Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA

A prototype design, which is based on the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique, is presented for the physical layer of the IEEE 802.11a standard. Implementation aspects of an OFDM modem on a Xilinx field programmable gate array (FPGA) are addressed. The system includes synchronization circuitry used for packet detection and time synchronization. The demonstrated design flow shows an approach to implementing and prototyping the architecture of a real-time base-band OFDM modem. This design is efficiently synthesized on a 0.15 μm/0.12 μm CMOS 8-layer metal process Virtex-II FPGA. The resulting hardware implementation is analyzed and simulated for a system clock speed of 72 MHz to verify adequate performance.