Custom instruction set NIOS-based OFDM processor for FPGAs

Orthogonal Frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) spread spectrum technique, sometimes also called multicarrier or discrete multi-tone modulation, are used in bandwidth-efficient communication systems in the presence of channel distortion. The benefits of OFDM are high spectral efficiency, resiliency to RF interference, and lower multi-path distortion. OFDM is the basis for the European digital audio broadcasting (DAB) standard, the global asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) standard, in the IEEE 802.11 5.8 GHz band standard, and ongoing development in wireless local area networks. The modulator and demodulator in an OFDM system can be implemented by use of a parallel bank of filters based on the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), in case the number of subchannels is large (e.g. K > 25), the OFDM system are efficiently implemented by use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) to compute the DFT. We have developed a custom FPGA-based Altera NIOS system to increase the performance, programmability, and low power in mobile wireless systems. The overall gain observed for a 1024-point FFT ranges depending on the multiplier used by the NIOS processor between a factor of 3 and 16. A careful optimization described in the appendix yield a performance gain of up to 77% when compared with our preliminary results(12,13).