Half-frame pipelining for modular software defined radio

The understanding of design approaches to modular software defined radio (mod-SDR) are of immediate relevance for offering flexible services to mobile users, by means of a single communication device. Both the potential of modular hardware/software for short time to market and the capability of mastering diverse data transmission modes under a unified multiprocessing framework are the motivation for research efforts in this field. In the present paper we continue to study half-frame pipelining (HFP) as a method for scheduling software modules on a particular two-processor hardware. We compare the properties of HFP to those of graph duplication pipelining (GDP) for both circuit-switched and packet-switched services. Based on computer simulations of both a generalized SDR environment and the example of an IEEE 802.11a WLAN communication system, we conclude on the utility of these pipelining methods for operating Mod-SDR terminals.