IEEE ComSoc-SP May 2010 Talk

Talk Abstract:

Due to the rise in complexity of current and next-generation communication systems, the cost of development cost for these systems is becoming increasingly prohibitive, especially for applications that do not benefit from economies of scale. The existing paradigm of teams that focus separately on theory and algorithm design, HW/SW design, prototyping and implementation, with a likewise diverse set of tools and HW/SW platforms, is proving to be inefficient, especially with the ever-tightening cost and time-to-market requirements. Hence, a unified platform that simplifies transition from theory and algorithm development to first prototype implementation is highly valuable.

In this paper/talk, we explore the benefits of a highly integrated hardware and software platform for the design and prototyping of a 2x2 LTE-MIMO wireless link. We investigate the use of parameterized synchronous dataflow model of computation to specify the functionality, which in tandem with a computing platform consisting of traditional processor, FPGA, and tightly-integrated real-world I/O, can allow the communications expert to focus on the key innovative aspects of his system, and selectively abstract the low-level details that the researcher considers distractions. We describe the benefits of this approach, and show a working prototype of the LTE system built using this paradigm.

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Ian C. Wong received the BS degree in electronics and communications engineering (magna cum laude) from the University of the Philippines in 2000, and the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 and 2007, respectively.

From 2000-2002, he was a senior science research specialist at the Advanced Science and Technology Institute in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, where he worked on formal models for computation for Bluetooth protocol stack development. He has held summer internship positions at National Instruments and Freescale Semiconductor, both in Austin, TX USA from 2003-2006. From 2007-2009, he was a systems research and standards engineer with the Cellular Products Group, Freescale Semiconductor, Austin, TX USA, where he represented Freescale in the 3GPP LTE standardization efforts. He is currently a Senior Engineer at National Instruments in Austin, TX researching on unified hardware and software platforms for next-generation wireless system design, simulation, and prototyping.

Dr. Wong is the co-author of the Springer book Resource Allocation for Multiuser Multicarrier Wireless Systems, has 6 patents pending, 25 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, and over 40 standards contributions. He was awarded the Texas Telecommunications Engineering Consortium Fellowship in 2003-2004, and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group student leadership award in 2007. His research interests include models of computation for signal processing, statistical signal processing and optimization for wired and wireless broadband communication systems.