Software-defined Radio
using Xilinx

Conclusion

    The software-defined radio is a very flexible solution to the digital wireless communications industry. Xilinx provides a powerful design tool for FPGA implementation.  In this project, a SDR with QPSK modulation scheme has been successfully designed using Xilinx tools.  The PLL and differential coding scheme show robustness in recovering carrier frequency offset and solving the phase ambiguity problem of the QPSK system.  It can be extended to other bandwidth-efficient digital modulations, overcoming the problems such as phase shift introduced by channel imperfections, signal attenuation, Doppler frequency shift etc. Moreover, the software simulation and hardware implementation procedures show that this type of hardware/software design methodology is well suited to a broad range of applications in communication and signal processing.

References

[1]     Chris Dick, Fred Harris, and Michael Rice, “FPGA implementation of carrier synchronization for QAM receivers”, Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, Vol. 36, pp. 57-71, Kluwer academic publishers, Netherland, 2004.

[2]     Stephens, Donald R. Phase-locked loops for wireless communications digital and analog implementation. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1998.

[3]     Vinod Kumar Venkat Reddy Gari, “FPGA-based QPSK transceiver design”,  Technical Report, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bradley University, November 2008.

[4]     Altera Corporation, "PLL & Clocking Glossary," Altera, 1995-2010. [Online]. Available: http://www.altera.com. [Accessed: May 1, 2010].