A new hardware abstraction-based radiofrequency design methodology : foundations and case studies

Abstract

The need for radio systems is in growth due to the particular success of cellular and Wireless devices. On the one hand, the emergence of new applications and services raises consumer expectations regarding future radio systems’ performance. On the other hand, radio design is becoming more challenging due to multi-standard functionality, spectrum crowdedness and harsh operating environments. In order to keep pace with the emerging requirements, notable advances have taken place in digital design either in implementation technologies or in design approaches and tools. On the radiofrequency side, many promising technologies are being developed to enhance radio systems capability but little interest is dedicated to the improvement of design approaches and tools. To bridge this gap, several design challenges should be addressed especially in terms of productivity, design collaboration, automation and reuse as well as ensuring better technology insertion. To tackle all these challenges, it is necessary to ameliorate the design approaches, overcome technology-dependence and raise the abstraction level in today’s radiofrequency design practice in order to decouple the radio functionality from the underlying technology. In the light of this observation, we dedicate this thesis to the elaboration of a new radiofrequency design methodology based on hardware abstraction. Its first section investigates the limitations of current RF design tools and approaches. The following one presents an alternative framework that tackles the issues of automation, design collaboration and reuse. The proposed framework is based on a comprehensive abstraction strategy that combines intensive modeling activity and handful abstraction mechanisms to enable higher design automation and agility. The last section is dedicated to the validation of the proposed framework through selected case studies.

Date	15 Nov 2016
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Ammar B. Kouki (Supervisor) & Jean Belzile (Co-supervisor)