IEEE 802.11AC MIMO transmitter baseband processing on customized VLIW processor

This paper presents a software-based implementation for the MIMO transmitter baseband processing conforming to the IEEE802.11ac standard on a DSP core with vector extensions. The transmitter is implemented in four different transmission scenarios, which include 2×2 and 4×4 MIMO configurations, yielding beyond 1Gbps transmit bit rate. The implementation is done for the frequency-domain processing and real-time operation has been achieved when running at a clock frequency of 500MHz. The proposed software solution is evaluated in terms of power consumption, number of clock cycles and memory usage. This SDR based implementation provides improved flexibility and reduced design effort compared to conventional approaches while maintaining energy consumption close to fixed-function hardware solutions.