FPGA-based rapid prototyping platform for MIMO-BICM design space exploration

FPGA-based rapid-prototyping becomes more and more important for the design space exploration of wireless systems. FPGA-based platforms allow faster system exploration with a high degree of flexibility. In this paper, we present a rapid-prototyping platform for double-iterative MIMO-BICM systems which belong to the most complex communication systems of current and future (4G, 5G) standards. Unified streaming interfaces simplify the connection of system components and the replacement of individual components without influencing the rest of the system. Hardware verification is often a very time-consuming task. Therefore, the platform offers special testing features. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first hardware implementation of a double-iterative MIMO-BICM system including channel preprocessing, MIMO detection and channel decoding.