Paper Info
Title
A dual-processor solution for the MAC layer of a software defined radio terminal
Abstract
Considerable work has been devoted to studying flexible computation structures for the physical layer of a software defined radio (SDR) terminal. However there has been almost no research on protocol processors for the upper layer protocols such as the media access control (MAC) and link protocol. A general purpose processor (GPP) is sufficient for the protocol processing of a single mode terminal. However, in the case of a multi-mode system required for SDR, there is a very wide set of possibilities for the MAC layer. In principle these too could be handled by a GPP. However, we show that a better solution is to use a GPP augmented by a small supplemental processor. The GPP is responsible for the relatively complex protocol operations in the active mode, and the supplemental processor handles the idle mode operations. This separation of responsibilities simplifies the implementation of hard real-time responses required by some protocols (for example IEEE 802.11), while maintaining the programmability needed to handle a wide range of protocols. In addition, this organization allows a significant power savings in the idle mode. This is important because the protocol processor must process a large number of tiny idle mode tasks whose aggregate effect over time dominates the power consumption in a wireless termina.As part of our study we develop a hardware model of the supplemental processor in Verilog and its software model in C. Using commercial CAD tools we synthesized out design and evaluated the power consumption and response time of the platform. Our results show that the proposed platform meets the real-time deadlines at low power while maintaining programmability.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1145/1086297.1086331
CASES
Keywords
Field
DocType
active mode,supplemental processor,general purpose processor,complex protocol operation,dual-processor solution,idle mode operation,radio terminal,mac layer,power consumption,protocol processor,link protocol,protocol processing,idle mode,physical layer,real time,media access control,software defined radio,single mode
Media access control,Wireless,Computer science,Idle,Software-defined radio,Parallel computing,Response time,Real-time computing,Software,Physical layer,Verilog,Embedded system
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-59593-149-X
2
0.37
References 
Authors
7
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hyun-Seok Lee124825.22
Trevor Mudge26139659.74