GEDOMIS®: GEneric hardware DemOnstrator for MIMO Systems
Design, prototype & validate high performance real-time PHY-layer algorithms
| | Introduction | BeMImoMAX highlights | Development stages & funding | Ongoing & future work | Dissemination | What we offer | Personnel & Contact | |
Introduction  GEDOMIS® (GEneric hardware DemOnstrator for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Systems) is an experimental platform that comprises a complete set of high performance baseband prototyping boards (FPGA and DSP-based), signal generation equipment, high-end RF front-ends, signal analysis instruments, specialized software tools and APIs. A key instrument of the testbed is the EB Propsim C8 channel emulator, which can be configured to provide realistic mobility scenarios of both certified and user-designed channel models. The Propsim C8 operates in real-time and facilitates the verification and testing of system designs prior to field-trials. Hence, GEDOMIS® offers a laboratory environment that enables the prototyping of next generation broadband wireless communication systems, which feature bit-intensive OFDM PHY-layer techniques combined with multi-antenna schemes.
A real-time baseband implementation of a MIMO-OFDM mobile WiMAX transmitter and receiver, namely BeMImoMAX, (DL, TDD, single user, point-to-point) is the first CTTC's high-performance HDL IP to reach the market. A real-time PHY-layer prototype based on LTE and running on FPGA devices is currently under development. The latter, together with other HDL IPs planned to be released in 2012, will enhance the portfolio of CTTC. BeMImoMAX was validated using the FPGA boards of GEDOMIS® (i.e., VHS-DAC, VHS-ADC and SMQUAD-V4 from Nutaq, whereas the remaining hardware setup of GEDOMIS® provided a realistic environment to test diverse emulated mobility conditions. Note that BeMImoMAX is currently ported in a new baseband platform of Nutaq based on the Perseus 601X and the Radio 420X boards. The steps of the design and implementation flow are summarised in the following lines:
The PHY-layer of BeMImoMAX includes a limited subset of the flexible OFDM configuration defined in the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard specifications (i.e., the current version of the baseband prototype has fixed bandwidth, modulation scheme and FFT size).
More details of the implementation and validation will be added soon. | BeMImoMAX highlights BeMImoMAX showcases a high performance VHDL implementation of the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard PHY-layer. An outline of its main features is given in this section.
As of 27th of February 2012 BeMImoMAX is available to purchase from:
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GEDOMIS® TESTBED HARDWARE SETUP
A complete discription of the testbed operation will posted soon.
Promotional video The video describes the PHY-layer design, implementation and validation of a MIMO mobile WiMAX receiver (development progress: July 2010). To watch the video in High Definition please adjust the video quality from the player's panel or click in the following links:First part, Second part Dissemination
What we offer You may count on our extensive experience in deploying high complexity real-time PHY layer MIMO systems targeting FPGA devices.
| Development stages & funding The past, present and future stages of the systems developed (or to be developed) and hosted in GEDOMIS® are the following:
Apart from the complementary funding-support coming from CTTC’s budget, the mentioned GEDOMIS® testbed development stages were mainly motivated and funded by the following European or national projects:
Ongoing & future work
Personnel & Contact Nikolaos Bartzoudis, Ph.D. Research Associate - GEDOMIS® testbed coordinator Role: System engineering, VHDL programming, code-integration & implementation, system-debugging Email: nbartzoudis (at) cttc (dot) es Tel.: +34 933967170 Ext. 2136 Oriol Font, M.Sc. David López, M.Sc. Antonio Pascual-Iserte, Ph.D. Ana Pérez-Neira, Ph.D. |
We are proud to announce the public release of BeMImoMAX during the Mobile World Congress 2012. Please visit CTTC's booth (Hall 3.0 Courtyard - CY03) or Lyrtech RD (Nutaq) booth (Hall 2, 2A101) for more information.
GEDOMIS® will have its first presence at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). A remote demo connection with the laboratory will be offered to the visitors of the CTTC stand at the MWC. Come to visit us at CTTC's booth (Hall 3.0 Courtyard - CY03) to get more infomation on our R&D activities.
Oriol Font together with Nikolaos Bartzoudis and Miquel Payaró had their inter-consortium (BeFemto FP7 ICT, call 4 ongoing project) proposal approved for a six-month project that will demonstrate interference mitigation techniques in a test scenario that includes (i) one LTE-based Macro BS (eNodeB) and a user and (ii) one femto BS (HeNodeB) and another femto user. FPGA-based prototypes will be developed for the above BSs and UEs.
Oriol Font presented a paper during the EUSIPCO 2011 conference entitled "Prototyping Processing-Demanding Physical Layer Systems Featuring Single or Multi-antenna Schemes".
Antonio Pascual has worked in the Publication section of the conference. Nikolaos Bartzoudis was member of the local committee.
Nikolaos Bartzoudis presented a paper entitled "A Real-Time FPGA-based mobile WiMAX transceiver supporting multi-antenna configurations" on the 5th Argentine Conference on Micro-Nanoelectronics, Technology, and Applications. Technology transfer liaising during the industry day of the conference.
Nikolaos Bartzoudis gave a tutorial on design & prototyping techniques of compute-intensive baseband processing systems at the National University of La Plata (Argentina). A follow up invited talk explored potential collaboration possibilities.
The funded research project is expected to start in the beginning of 2012 and its duration will be 3 years. The focus of this collaborative project is on energy awareness and harvesting issues in modern communication terminals and it will be developed in collaboration with the University Carlos III of Madrid. The project will be funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (call CICYT 2011). Toni Pascual, Miquel Payaró and Nikolaos Bartzoudis have worked for the preparation of the proposal.
Kick-off of an industrial project aiming at selling software licenses (i.e., Matlab & VHDL) of CTTC's MIMO-OFDM mobile WiMAX baseband transceiver prototype via a third party.
Internal kick-off meeting for the development of a modular and versatile RF Transceiver prototype including 2 transmitters, 2 receivers, 1 DDS-based synthesizer + fixed-PLLs, and a FPGA-based RF digital control unit. The initiative targets next generation wireless systems requiring RF spectrum awareness and agility over ultra wide frequency ranges. David López will lead this development during the next two years.
Remote access of the GEDOMIS® testbed and live demonstration during a workshop organised in Berlin by the official German distributor of Lyrtech products. Nikolaos Bartzoudis gave a talk focusing on the actual and future R&D projects initiatives with the aim to promote networking and collaborative opportunities.
Oriol Font presented a paper during the Mobilight 2011 conference, entitled "A Real-Time FPGA-based Implementation of a High-Performance MIMO-OFDM Mobile WiMAX Transmitter".
Internal kick-off meeting for the development of a MIMO LTE-based PHY-layer prototype (FDD) implemented in a real-time FPGA platform and hosted at GEDOMIS® testbed. Oriol Font leads this initiative, which is principally developed by Pepe Rubio. |
Oriol Font et al. published a paper on Elsevier's journal on Computer Networks entitled "A real-time MIMO-OFDM mobile WiMAX receiver: Architecture, design and FPGA implementation" (mobile WiMAX special issue).
Kick-off meeting for the awarded projects of the VALOR 2010 call organised by the Autonomic Catalan government (AGAUR) and ACC1Ó.
Oriol Font presented at UPC his Ph.D. thesis proposal entitled "Deployment, prototyping and validation of advanced real-time multi-antenna algorithms for adaptive communication systems". This Ph.D. research is jointly supervised by Antonio Pascual and Nikolaos Bartzoudis.
Nikolaos Bartzoudis, representing the whole GEDOMIS® testbed team, has received a grant from the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR). The aim of the VALOR 2010 call is the commercialization of innovating R&D projects. The awarded project GEDOMIS-ADCOMM (GEDOMIS-ADaptive physical layer implementation of advanced multi-antenna COMMunication schemes) will have a duration of two years and its goal will be to implement and commercialize an adaptive PHY-layer signal processing framework.
A live demonstraion with a limited set-up of the testbed was successfully presented at the Europen Nanoelectronic Forum 2010 [1], summurizing as well the MIMOWA project results.
After designing the Matlab model of the PHY-layer of a MIMO mobile WiMAX transmitter (2x2 MIMO), the corresponding real-time VHDL implementation has been validated and tested in the GEDOMIS® testbed FPGA boards. This will allows us to substitute the currently used emulation of the MIMO mobile WiMAX transmitter (i.e. comprised by two vector signal generators that playback in real-time a Matlab-generated WiMAX signal) with our FPGA-based custom VHDL real-time implementation.
Lyrtech Inc., one of CTTC's providers in baseband signal processing boards and DSP solutions, is promoting the GEDOMIS® testbed R&D activities, as a "success story", in various web-pages of their products. This includes the GEDOMIS® testbed brochure, video and wiki-page (i.e. under literature and multimedia tabs): [2], [3], [4], [5].
Nikolaos Bartzoudis has served as TPC in the 2010 International Conference on Emerging Security Technologies[6].
A master test of the remote live demonstration setup of GEDOMIS® testbed has been validated in CTTC's demo center hosted at the 22@ district of Barcelona.
Oriol Font and Nikolaos Bartzoudis have presented a paper in the 6th International ICST Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks & Communities [11].
Nikolaos Bartzoudis has attended the seminar "Technology Transfer as a Means to Exploit Results from Research & Innovation Activities - Licensing Agreements", organised by the IPR-Helpdesk of the Alicante University.
A reference was made to the GEDOMIS® testbed R&D activities as part of an article dedicated to CTTC's role and perspective, published in the nationwide newspaper "La Vanguardia" (available in Spanish) [13].
The goal of the project "BuNGee" (Beyond Next Generation Mobile Broadband) is to dramatically improve the overall infrastructure capacity density by an order of magnitude (10x) to an ambitious goal of 1Gbps/Km2 anywhere in the cell. Nikolaos Bartzoudis and Toni Pascual have contributed in the preparation of proposal of this FP7 project (ICT call 4). |
