FPGA Implementation of a Novel Receiver Diversity Combining Technique for Wireless SIMO Systems

In this paper, we study FPGA implementation of a novel receiver diversity combining technique, RMSGC for wireless transmission over fading channels in SIMO systems. Prior published results using ML-detected RMSGC diversity signal driven by BPSK showed superior bit error rate performance to classical diversity combining schemes. RMSGC was shown to be near-optimal in the sense that it was very close to that of the theoretically optimal MRC. Since MRC requires estimation of the channel coefficients, it is complicated and expensive, and it is not practical for non-coherent modulation and differentially coherent modulation. RMSGC, on the other hand, is a more attractive and simpler scheme since it does not require knowledge of the channel information states. The main drawback of RMSGC is that it is a non-linear technique, thus successful FPGA implementation of it using pipeline techniques is needed as a wireless communication test-bed for practical real-life situations. Simulation results showed that the hardware implementation was efficient both in terms of speed and area.