Codesign implementation of a 3G base station receiver

We show how a software/hardware codesign approach can lead to the implementation of a spatio-temporal array-receiver (STAR) in a 3G WCDMA base station context. STAR has already proven substantial gains over the 2D RAKE receiver (Affes, S. and Mermelstein, P., IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol.16, p.1411-22, 1998), and current technology is now sufficiently integrated to allow its cost-efficient hardware implementation. To this end, we demonstrate how the STAR algorithm can be translated to fit into a mixed FPGA/GPP (general purpose processor) architecture. We also define a data flow path, including pipelining and sequencing, which can be used to increase the number of channels that can be processed simultaneously within the system.