Reconfigurable processing: The solution to low-power programmable DSP

One of the most compelling issues in the design of wireless communication components is to keep power dissipation between bounds. While low-power solutions are readily achieved in an application-specific approach, doing so in a programmable environment is a substantially harder problem. This paper presents an approach to low-power programmable DSP that is based on the dynamic reconfiguration of hardware modules. This technique has shown to yield at least an order of magnitude of power reduction compared to traditional instruction-based engines for problems in the area of wireless communication.