Hardware acceleration of MUSIC based DoA estimator in MUBTS

This paper presents a hardware implementation of a MUSIC based DoA estimator in a practical Multiple Users Beam Tracker System (MUBTS). The robustness and accuracy of the algorithm was first checked in a much more flexible software implementation on a PC. The hardware version involves a fixed point hardware implementation in an FPGA processor, which is then integrated into the original MUBTS as a hardware acceleration, replacing the original softcored DoA estimator. The hardware accelerated MUBTS is tested and its performance is evaluated against the original one. The result is that the hardware DoA estimation processor is seamlessly integrated into the original MUBTS, reducing the iteration time of each DoA estimation from 3s to 0.3s without losing quality and ability to track moving objects.