A complete real-time 802.11a baseband receiver implemented on an array of programmable processors

This paper reports the design and software implementation of a real-time digital baseband receiver compliant with the IEEE 802.11a standard on the AsAP2 platform, a DSP chip multiprocessor. The computational platform consists of an array of programmable processors and configurable accelerators interconnected in a 2-D mesh network that are well matched for implementing complex DSP and embedded systems such as wireless and video applications. The receiver has full functionality including frame detection, timing synchronization, carrier frequency offset compensation, and channel equalization. It supports all eight operational modes defined in the standard: 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 and 54 Mbps. The implementation is optimized such that the receiver can obtain a full 54 Mbps rate while using an array of 29 small processors plus Viterbi and FFT accelerators configured to operate at 590 MHz.