Channel equalizer for a digital mobile telephone using narrow-band TDMA transmission

A channel equalizer for a digital mobile telephone using narrow-band TDMA (time-division multiple access) transmission is being developed. By processing the received signal, such an equalizer estimates the transfer function of the radio channel and tries to compensate for the distortion introduced by the channel. This task has some interesting implications. First, the estimation of the channel transfer function must be fast, since it is performed once every TDMA burst. Second, the receiver may have to be adaptive to track the channel variations during a burst. Third, deviations in the local oscillator frequency may easily upset a naive equalizer. The equalizer was implemented using the experimental Lager Silicon Compiler. Lager handles high-level descriptions of the signal processor hardware as well as of the algorithms. The impact (in terms of speed and processor size) of algorithm or architecture changes may easily be assessed. This makes Lager powerful in helping the designer to find a good solution to the design problem