OFDM/ Flash-OFDMࡊ re-configurable transceivers using general purpose processors

This paper presents a novel approach for a multi-carrier software radio implementation of an OFDM transceiver using an extremely efficient OFDM frame synchronization technique. The signal processing engine is a general-purpose processor which allows total re-configurability of the transceiver in addition to enabling multiple transceivers to share a single hardware front-end. As an example to show how a complex hardware transceiver may be rapidly implemented and deployed by taking a software approach, The Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG) based in Trinity College Dublin has implemented their version of Flash-OFDMࡊ; a frequency-hopping variation of OFDM based on a pseudo-random sequence. This scheme offers greater immunity to performance degradation in a communications link in addition to a basic data security feature resulting from the nature of the code-based frequency spreading.