On the design of an FPGA-based OFDM modulator for IEEE 802.16-2004

Current and future communication schemes tend to use OFDM systems in order to provide high baud rates and less inter symbol interference. Some examples are 802.11, 802.16, MC-CDMA, Digital Video Broadcasting, Wireless USB and Wireless Firewire. Trying to provide a solution to the new emerging devices, slow standard adoption and poor spectrum use, Joe Mitola introduced the concept of "Software Defined Radio" (SDR), which involves exhaustive configurable digital signal processing like FFT. This work presents the design, validation and FPGA based implementation of an "Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing" (OFDM) modulator for IEEE 802.16 using a high level design tool, and also reports the resources requirements for the presented system.