System scenarios-based architecture level exploration of SDR application using a network-on-chip simulation framework

Software-defined radio (SDR) terminals are critical to enable concrete and consecutive inter-working between fourth generation wireless access systems or communication modes. Next generation of SDR terminals will have heavy hardware requirements and the switching between the different resource utilization modes will introduce dynamism in respect to timing and size of resource requests. This study exploits the flexibility of a system-level framework, combining a cycle-accurate Network-on-Chip (NoC) simulation environment with an SDR simulator, applying the systems scenario methodology. The aim of our framework is to characterize an SDR platform considering the design trade-offs at an early development phase. The main scope is to define a design space of optimal platform configuration points for a potential SDR resource manager. The purpose is to achieve an efficient resource utilization retaining the reconfiguration cost in reasonable levels. To handle the complexity of the design space, we introduced in the framework the concept of the system scenarios. The system scenario methodology classifies all the run-time situations of the system into cost representative situations. However, this introduces an overhead which is admeasured at the reconfiguration cost. In our case study, we achieve significant resource savings decreasing the energy consumption by 45–73% (based on the system’s deadlines).