IMPLEMENTATION OF OPTIMIZED
128-POINT PIPELINE FFT PROCESSOR
USING MIXED RADIX 4-2 FOR OFDM
APPLICATIONS
K. UMAPATHY,
Research scholar, Department of ECE, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Anantapur, India, [email protected]
DR. D. RAJAVEERAPPA,
Professor, Department of ECE, Loyola Institute of Technology, Chennai, India, [email protected]
Abstract
This paper proposes a 128-point FFT processor for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems to process the real time high speed data based on cached-memory architecture (CMA) with the resource Mixed Radix 4-2 algorithm using MDC style. The design and implementation of FFT processor has been done using the above technique to reduce the size and power. Using the above algorithm the chip size will be 2.8 x 2.8 mm2 with 0.35μm technology. The power consumption with our optimum case is 72 mW for an operating speed of 127-133 MHz which is only less than half of the latest reported 128-Point FFT design with 0.18 um technology. A comparison has been made for various pipeline architectures such as MDC, SDF, and SDC using the same algorithm for the design of 128-point FFT processor with respect to memory size, area and power.
Keywords: OFDM, CMA, Mixed Radix 4-2, FFT, R42MDC
1. Introduction
The fast Fourier transformation (FFT) is one of the most frequently used Digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms for Orthogonal Frequency Division multiplexing (OFDM) applications. There are various types of FFT architectures used in OFDM systems. They can be categorized into three types- the parallel architecture, the pipeline architecture and the memory architecture. The parallel and pipeline architectures employ more butterfly processing units to achieve high performance but consume larger area when compared to memory architecture. The shared memory architecture employs only one butterfly processing unit having the advantage of area efficiency. The block diagram of FFT processor is shown in figure 1. Our paper focuses on the memory architecture for area efficiency and hardware simplicity in order to construct a small OFDM system. We have proposed a 128-point FFT processor, consuming low power and having small chip area using CMOS technology and to increase the processing speed based on cached-memory architecture (CMA) and R42MDC (Mixed Radix 4/2 MDC) style.
2. Mixed Radix 4/2 Algorithm
The computation of FFT is represented by Eq. (1). There are two types of mixed-radix FFT algorithms. The first category indicates a situation arising naturally when a radix-q algorithm, where q = 2m > 2, is applied to an input series consisting of N = 2k × qs equally spaced points, where 1 ≤ k < m. In this situation, ‘k’ steps of radix-2 algorithm are applied either at the beginning or at the end of the transformation. The second type of mixed-radix algorithms indicates to those specialized for a composite N = N0 × N1 × N2 ...× Nk. Different algorithms may be employed based upon on whether the factors satisfy certain restrictions or not. Only the 2 × 4m of the first type of mixed-radix algorithm will be considered here using the MDC style. The mixed-radix 4/2, calculates four butterfly outputs.
Fig 1. Block diagram of FFT processor
The input data will be divided into two parallel data stream and enters the butterfly processing element after proper delay time using R42MDC algorithm. Similar to CMA, the Mixed Radix-4/2 FFT algorithm is used as an example to introduce R42MDC-based FFT processor architecture. The MDC structure and the signal flow graph for Mixed Radix 4/2 algorithm are shown in figure 2 and figure 3 respectively.
Fig 2. Radix 4-2 MDC Structure
3. Cached-Memory Architecture
Fig 3. Signal Flow Graph of 128-point FFT using Mixed Radix 4-2 algorithm.
Fig 4. The Proposed Cached-Memory Architecture
Table 1. Area and Power Consumption of 128-point FFT using MDC Style.
128 –Point FFT
Parameter/Type Conventional Design
Proposed Design (Reduction %)
Frequency (MHz)
Memory size (words) 128 91 (26.7) 127-133
Area (gate count) 51,000 41990.5 (23.5) 127-133
and a Cadence Simulator (Modelsim). Approximately twenty total modules for the processor and its sub-blocks were written. Table 1 shows the area and power consumption for the proposed FFT processor in comparison with the conventional FFT design. Moreover a comparison of MDC style with other pipeline architectures such as Single Delay Feedback (SDF) and Single Delay Commutator (SDC) with respect to area and power factors is shown in Table 2. Figure 5 shows the comparison graph for these pipeline architectures. Figure 6 and Figure 7 shows the simulation results for power and chip size of the proposed 128-point FFT processor respectively.
Fig 5. Comparison of Power, Area & Memory size for Pipeline Architectures – MDC (Blue), SDF (Brown) & SDC (Green).
Fig 7. Chip Size of 128-point FFT Processor.
5. Conclusion
The 128 point FFT processer was designed using cache memory architecture with the resource Mixed Radix 4-2 (R42MDC) using MDC style. This exploits a hierarchical memory structure with increased performance was developed with - (i) reduced power dissipation, (ii) small area and (iii) minimum operating clock frequencies. Moreover a comparison has been made with other pipeline architectures and MDC style chosen for the design. The power consumption with our optimum case is 72 mw which is only less than half of the latest reported 128-Point FFT design in 0.18 um technology at the operating frequency 127-133 MHz. This implementation can be used in low power applications for OFDM system data transfer and wireless communication systems. In this study, an FFT processor based on the proposed algorithm has been implemented by using Verilog HDL and Model Sim for circuit design and simulation.
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