IEEE802.16-2004 OFDM functions implementation on FPGAS with design exploration

The IEEE 802.16 standard, WiMAX, is a promising solution for broadband wireless access with implementations already happening. Those implementations are considering FPGAs as a viable option, because of their flexibility, performance, time-to-market and available resources. In this paper, two approaches are employed to map the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard on FPGAs: a pure VHDL and an AccelDSP-based approaches. Mapping the OFDM part of the digital baseband processor resulted an occupation rate of 25% and 30% resepctively. Timing results showed that the VHDL approach can obtain a better maximum frequency of operation of 171.8 MHz. However, the AccelDSP approach shows an advantage of a shorter design time and early trade-off analysis.