A radix-8/4/2 FFT processor for OFDM

systems

Jungmin Park
Project background

OFDM used widely for high-speed digital communication

High performance of FFT processor for real time application
Dedicated FFT processor for only specific application
Variable-length FFT processor for many applications

Application FFT length

DVB-T/H 2K-8K
DAB 256-2K
xDSL 256-4K
WLAN 64-128
Nicola E. Linsalata, Sergio Sanponara, Luca Fanucci, Pierangelo Terreni, Automatic Synthesis of cost
effective FFT/IFFT cores for VLSI OFDM Systems
Architecture of conventional FFT processors
Pipeline architecture
Pipeline process High throughput
Butterfly unit and memory every computation stage
large area with large FFT length

Parallel architecture
Parallel process High throughput
The worst case in hardware efficiency

Shared memory architecture

The best case in hardware efficiency
Low throughput High-radix FFT algorithm
Project objective and contents

Project objective
Design of High-performance and variable-length FFT processor for OFDM
systems

Project contents
Hardware efficiency and Shared memory architecture
area Proposed twiddle factor generator

High throughput Pipelined Radix-8 DIF FFT algorithm

Only Radix-8 FFT : 8n points (64, 512, 4K points)
Mixed Radix-8/4 FFT : 4g8n points (256, 2K points) and 8n points
Mixed Radix-8/2 FFT: 2g8n points (128, 1K, 8K points) ) and 8n points

Variable FFT length Mixed radix-8/4/2 DIF butterfly unit

Memory assignment and Efficient memory assignment and addressing
addressing
Structure of proposed FFT processor

Memory
8 banks
Dual port
Radix-8/4/2 BU
Memory address
generator and
Commutator
Twiddle factor
generator
Control unit
Operation of the proposed FFT processer (64-point data flow)
The Pipelined radix-8/4/2 DIF butterfly unit
S0 S1 Mode
0 0 4 parallel Radix-2
0 1 2 Parallel Radix-4
1 0 Radix-8 without multiplication
1 1 Radix-8 with multiplication
Application of proposed butterfly unit

Point # Computation Stages 1 stage 2 stage 3 stage 4 stage 5 stage

64 2 Radix-8 Radix-8

128 3 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-2

256 3 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-4

512 3 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8

1K 4 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-2

2K 4 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-4

4K 4 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8

8K 5 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-8 Radix-2

Twiddle factor generator
Twiddle factor generator
Recurisive feedback difference equation
sin n 2cos n sin(n 1) sin(n 2)
cos n 2cos cos(n 1) cos( n 2)

Error propagation problem sin m 2cos gsin(m 1) sin( m 2)

2(cos 2 ( n 1) )[sin(m 1) 2 ( n 1) ] [sin( m 2) 2 ( n 1) ]
3 3
n error n 2 cos sin( m 1) sin( m 2) 2 n [sin( m 1) cos 2 1 2 ( n 1) ]
2 2 max | 2 n [sin(m 1) cos 21 2 ( n 1) ] | 2 ( n 2)

Proposed error correction using correction table

[ z2 z1 z0 ]2 unsigned ([ x2 x1 x0 ]2 [ y2 y1 y0 ]2 )
Correct _ value signed (computed _ value [ z2 z1 z0 ]2 )
( where [ x x x ] is 3LSBs of correct value in correction table,
2 1 0 2
[ y y y ] is 3 LSBs of computed value.)
2 1 0 2
Structure of proposed twiddle factor generator

sin n 2cos n sin( n 1) sin(n 2)

cos n 2cos cos(n 1) cos(n 2)
Implemenation and verification (1)

VHDL modeling
How to verify and measure SQNR

SQNR 10 log10 (
(Re( A)) (Im( A))
2 2

)
(Re( A) Re( B)) (Im( A) Im( B))
2 2

( where A is the value of MATLAB, B is the value of proposed FFT )

Implemenation and verification (2)
Simulation (64 point FFT)

(a) Constellations (b) Error and SQNR

Point 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192

SQNR 66.9 63.2 60.3 57.7 55 51.9 48.1 45.3
(dB)
Implemenation and verification (3)

FPGA synthesis
Xilinx ISE 12.4
Xilinx Virtex-5

Input data Twiddle LUTs Block DSP 48s Critical Max.

width(bit) factor RAMs path(ns) Freq.
width(bit) (MHz)

16 16 4811 22 57 10.339 96.723

Conclusion
Design of high-performance and veriable-length FFT processor
Shared memory architecutre
Simplicity of hardware
Proposed Radix-8/4/2 DIF butterfly unit
Every point FFT computation from 64 to 8192 points
Proposed twiddle factor generator
80% reduction
SQNR : 45.3 ~ 66.7 dB
OFDM standard (symbol duration)
Proposed FFT processor for OFDM applications, such as 802.11a, 802.16a, DAB,
DVB-T and so on
Thank you for listening