C++ based system design of a 72 Mb/s OFDM transceiver for wireless LAN

This paper describes the system-level design process followed for the implementation of a 72 Mb/s OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) transceiver for 5 GHz wireless LAN (Local Area Network) that is realized in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The starting point is a high-level specification using the general-purpose programming language C++. By making use of a set of class libraries developed internally at IMEC, architectural trade-offs can be easily explored. The open nature of a C++ based design environment supports the re-use of previously designed building blocks and allows designers to extend the typically supported design-flow eliminating the need for manual generation and correction of synthesis and verification scripts. Automated HDL (Hardware Description Language) code generation from the C++ descriptions creates the link to standard synthesis tools and back-end flows