CuSora: Real-time software radio using multi-core graphics processing unit

The Sora platform, which is a fully programmable, high-performance software radio platform based on a commodity general purpose PC, has recently received significant attention. However, acceleration techniques used in Sora are too complicated for developers, which can prevent researchers from modifying physical layer (PHY) processing. This paper presents the CuSora platform, which integrates the Sora platform with a popular multi-core graphics processing unit (GPU) as the modem processor to achieve high-speed PHY signal processing. CuSora also exploits software techniques to fulfill requirements for real-time communication. A software controller is presented to achieve multi-mode communication. The features of the single-instruction multiple data parallel computation of the GPU are also employed to accelerate PHY processing. Several wireless protocols, such as WiFi (802.11a) or WiMAX (802.16), are demonstrated on the CuSora platform for verification. CuSora meets the requirement of real-time communication and has an excellent bit error ratio performance. CuSora has a higher performance, shorter development cycle, and better coding flexibility than the Sora platform.