Flexible and Dynamically Reconfigurable FPGA-Based FS-FBMC Baseband Modulator

Filter-bank Multicarrier Modulation (FBMC) is a 5G waveform candidate with improved spectral efficiency and out-of-band emissions performance compared to OFDM. To address the challenge of designing flexible hardware infrastructures for future wireless communications, this paper presents a dynamically reconfigurable FPGA-based Frequency Spreading FBMC (FS-FBMC) baseband modulator. Based on a detailed modulator datapath analysis, the proposed architecture combines static multi-mode modules with dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) to achieve a flexible and evolvable system. Results show that our design is resource-efficient, due to hardware virtualization. Moreover, low-latency reconfiguration of static multi-mode modules combined with ICAP overclocking results in sub-millisecond reconfiguration times which are viable in the context of flexible communication systems, such as Cognitive Radios.