Mapping channel estimation and MIMO detection in LTE-advanced on a reconfigurable cell array

This paper presents a flexible architecture suitable for performing both channel estimation and signal detection in a MIMO-OFDM downlink. Extensive hardware sharing between two tasks is achieved by algorithm and architecture co-design, where robust MMSE sliding window channel estimation and MMSE-based signal detection with symbol perturbation scheme are adopted. The proposed architecture is based on a coarse-grained reconfigurable cell array with fast context switching capabilities. High flexibility is provided by the architecture, which allows task-level resource sharing and dynamic adoption of different algorithms onto the same platform. Simulation and analysis results have confirmed the efficiency of the proposed design solution, where more than 75% hardware resources are reused between the adopted algorithms.