Enabling Software-Defined RF Convergence with a Novel Coarse-Scale Heterogeneous Processor

RF system development is traditionally constrained by a restrictive trade-off between power efficiency and programmatic flexibility. We outline a path towards achieving both, thereby enabling a range of new system concepts that better utilize limited resources. As an example, for many future applications, we consider RF convergence – reusing the same spectrum and waveforms to achieve multiple distributed system functions and goals, simultaneously. To enable this next step in processing, we develop a novel framework that includes both software and the system-on-chip (SoC) design.