Design, mapping, and simulations of a 3G WCDMA/FDD base station using network on chip

This paper presents a case study of a single-chip 3G WCDMA/FDD base station implementation based on a circuit-switched network on chip. As the amount of transistors on a chip continues to increase, so does the possibility to integrate more functionality onto every chip. By combining general-purpose and application-specific hardware, it is possible to integrate the complete baseband part of a 3G base station on a single chip. Such a single-chip base station has been modeled from a communication perspective without full implementations of the processing elements. The system has been scheduled and implemented as a traffic model for a network on chip simulator. Simulation results show perfect adherence to the schedule already at a network clock frequency of 75 MHz. The overall network usage is relatively low except for the area closest to the radio interfaces. This allows for other messages, e.g. control related, to be transported over the network during the gaps in the communication schedule.