Design of a reconfigurable UMTS channel processing engine

With difficult-to-predict traffic demands, the requirement to support multiple air interfaces and constantly evolving standards, software defined radio (SDR) has been proposed as a flexible alternative to today´s fixed ASIC/FPGA implementation fabric for cellular base-stations. The paper investigates the implementation of a highly configurable UMTS physical layer processing engine on a runtime reconfigurable platform (e.g., an FPGA with multiple runtime configurations). The implementation is designed to leverage both static configuration and runtime or dynamic reconfiguration. Static configuration is used for system parameters which are installation dependent but do not vary at runtime, for example the installation´s cell size. Dynamic reconfiguration is used to react to system variables which change at runtime, for example the mix between voice and data calls. Results suggest that leveraging the ability to instantiate the precise system required when targeting reconfigurable logic produces significant resource savings: 44% and greater.