Combining the benefits of FPGAs and a processor from NI, Olymp Engineering created a high-performance demodulator library.
Single carrier modulations are widely used in modern wireless communication receivers for data transmission and reception. OLYMP Engineering has developed Demodulation Library for FPGA that performs high speed BPSK, QPSK, 8PSK, 16PSK, 8QAM, 16QAM and OQPSK demodulation with symbol rate up to 40MSPS. Demodulation Library supports development for FPGA and Windows platforms, which allows developers to analyze, prototype algorithms, and application specific performance on Windows before compiling for FPGA. With LabVIEW and LabVIEW FPGA the marketing time is reduced drastically.
The PSK demodulator is mainly used to restore the shifted phases that are modulated at symbol rate to the carrier signals in the transmitter, and reinterpret the phase information back to symbols. The main components included in the Demodulation Library for FPGA are automatic gain control (AGC), matched filtering, carrier recovery, timing recovery, symbol decision and lock detection. This core can be dynamically programmable for MPSK=2, 4, 8 and 16 or MQAM=8 or 16 or OQPSK demodulation. Once the system locked, both demodulated In-Phase and Quadrature (I/Q) samples and hard-coded symbols are available at the outputs.
The customer’s objective was to build a system capable of automatic detection and demodulation of the majority of digital modulation types. By using the NI platform, the company fulfilled all the requirements and more, achieving 25 percent higher performance than required by the customer.