On the design of an FPGA-based OFDM modulator for IEEE 802.11a

The actual and next communication schemes tend to use OFDM systems in order to provide high baud rates and less inter symbol interference. Some examples are 802.11, 802.16, MC-CDMA, digital video broadcasting, wireless USB or wireless firewire among others. Trying to provide a solution to the new devices emerging, slow standard adoption, poor spectrum use, etc. Joe Mitola introduced the concept of "software defined radio", which involves exhaustive configurable digital signal processing like FFT, therefore FPGAs could support many of its operations. This work presents a FPGA design, validation and implementation of an "orthogonal frequency division multiplexing" (OFDM) modulator for IEEE 802.11a using a high level design tool, also reports the resources requirements for the presented system.