Due to the fast changing wireless communication standards coupled with strict performance constraints, the demand for flexible\r\nyet high-performance architectures is increasing. To tackle the flexibility requirement, software-defined radio (SDR) is emerging\r\nas an obvious solution, where the underlying hardware implementation is tuned via software layers to the varied standards\r\ndepending on power-performance and quality requirements leading to adaptable, cognitive radio. In this paper, we conduct\r\na case study for representatives of two complexity classes of WCDMA channel estimation algorithms and explore the effect of\r\nflexibility on energy efficiency using different implementation options. Furthermore, we propose new design guidelines for both\r\nhighly specialized architectures and highly flexible architectures using high-level synthesis, to enable the required performance\r\nand flexibility to support multiple applications. Our experiments with various design points show that the resulting architectures\r\nmeet the performance constraints ofWCDMA and a wide range of options are offered for tuning such architectures depending on\r\npower/performance/area constraints of SDR.
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