A single-chip supervised partial self-reconfigurable architecture for software defined radio

Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology seeks to solve the problem of multiple incompatible broadcast/telecom standards available in different locations, by having standard specific processing defined in software. This software is downloaded and run on generic hardware, so that different broadcast/telecom standards can be supported by downloading corresponding software modules. Computing platform based SDR attempts to bridge the worlds of computing and broadcast/telecoms, by exposing the features and resources of computers to SDR and vice versa. However, such a concept results in certain architectural issues that need to be resolved. This paper describes the concept of Computing Platform based SDR, and the resulting issues & desired features of such a system. An innovative system architecture that involves the supervised partial self-reconfiguration of a single FPGA is proposed and detailed. Finally, a system test is conducted to illustrate and verify the reconfiguration operation.