Hardware Architecture of Polyphase Filter Banks Performing Embedded Resampling for Software-Defined Radio Front-Ends

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[Abstract] In this paper, we describe resource-efficient hardware architectures for software-defined radio (SDR) front-ends. These architectures are made efficient by using a polyphase channelizer that performs arbitrary sample rate changes, frequency selection, and bandwidth control. We discuss area, time, and power optimization for field programmable gate array (FPGA) based architectures in an M -path polyphase filter bank with modified N -path polyphase filter. Such systems allow resampling by arbitrary ratios while simultaneously performing baseband aliasing from center frequencies at Nyquist zones that are not multiples of the output sample rate. A non-maximally decimated polyphase filter bank, where the number of data loads is not equal to the number of M subfilters, processes M subfilters in a time period that is either less than or greater than the M data-load’s time period. We present a load-process architecture (LPA) and a runtime architecture (RA) (based on serial polyphase structure) which have different scheduling. In LPA, N subfilters are loaded, and then M subfilters are processed at a clock rate that is a multiple of the input data rate. This is necessary to meet the output time constraint of the down-sampled data. In RA, M subfilters processes are efficiently scheduled within N data-load time while simultaneously loading N subfilters. This requires reduced clock rates compared with LPA, and potentially less power is consumed. A polyphase filter bank that uses different resampling factors for maximally decimated, under-decimated, over-decimated, and combined up- and down-sampled scenarios is used as a case study, and an analysis of area, time, and power for their FPGA architectures is given. For resource-optimized SDR front-ends, RA is superior for reducing operating clock rates and dynamic power consumption. RA is also superior for reducing area resources, except when indices are pre-stored in LUTs.

[Keywords] SDR; FPGA; Digital Front-ends; Polyphase Filter Bank; Embedded Resampling