High throughput resource efficient reconfigurable interleaver for MIMO WLAN application

Abstract

Demand for high-speed wireless broadband internet service is ever increasing. Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Wireless LAN (WLAN) is becoming a promising solution for such high-speed internet service requirements. This paper proposes a novel algorithm to efficiently model the address generation circuitry of the MIMO WLAN interleaver. The interleaver used in the MIMO WLAN transceiver has three permutation steps involving floor function whose hardware implementation is the most challenging task due to the absence of corresponding digital hardware. In this work, we propose an algorithm with a mathematical background for the address generator, eliminating the need for floor function. The algorithm is converted into digital hardware for implementation on the reconfigurable FPGA platform. Hardware structure for the complete interleaver, including the read address generator and memory module, is designed and modeled in VHDL using Xilinx Integrated Software Environment (ISE) utilizing embedded memory and DSP blocks of Spartan 6 FPGA. The functionality of the proposed algorithm is verified through exhaustive software simulation using ModelSim software. Hardware testing is carried out on Zynq 7000 FPGA using Virtual Input Output (VIO) and Integrated Logic Analyzer (ILA) core. Comparisons with few recent similar works, including the conventional Look-Up Table (LUT) based technique, show the superiority of our proposed design in terms of maximum improvement in operating frequency by 196.83%, maximum reduction in power consumption by 74.27%, and reduction of memory occupancy by 88.9%. In the case of throughput, our design can deliver 8.35 times higher compared to IEEE 802.11n requirement.

Keywords

• MIMO
• Reconfigurable hardware
• FPGA
• WLAN
• VHDL
• Digital hardware