Design and implementation of WATM interface card based on SOPC technology

A WATM interface card using SOPC technology is presented in this paper. WATM is an extension of fixed ATM networks, and provides users wireless access to broadband services. The SOPC technology, developed by Altera Corporation, consists of a FPGA (field programmable gate array) and a Nios embedded processor. This paper introduces a novel method for design and implementation of WATM lower protocol layers. The new architecture of the card and the WATM access IP (intellectual property) is the main contribution of this work presented. The WATM access IP core, which is designed in Verilog HDL(Hardware Description Language), executes the function of WATM cell formatter and deformatter and checkout. The Nios embedded processor manages the execution of components in the access IP core. As a result, the use of SOPC technology can make the WATM interface card more compact, high performance and cost down.