A C-programmable baseband processor with inner modem implementations for LTE Cat-4/5/7 and Gbps 80MHz 4×4 802.11ac (invited)

Emerging high throughput wireless communication standards, such as LTE/LTE-A and IEEE 802.11ac, impose exciting challenges on SDR baseband implementations. Our work explores the feasibility of SDR baseband for the most demanding-modes in those emerging high throughput standards. On a customized C programmable SDR baseband processor (with compiler support), we have accomplished realtime inner receiver implementations for Cat-4/5/7 LTE/LTE-A UE and up to the 80MHz 4 × 4 mode of IEEE 802.11ac. The implemented inner receiver includes all essential synchronization and data detection functionalities, including coarse CFO estimation/compensation, I/Q imbalance estimation/compensation, OFDM(A) demodulation, channel estimation, fine SCO/CFO estimation/compensation, channel tracking, MIMO channel processing, MIMO data detection, LLR generation, etc..