Abstract: A data transfer method is provided which includes: sending a stream of data elements from a source to a sink (controlled by a common clock); simultaneously with the sending of the data element stream, sending a first binary signal to the sink, where the first binary signal is low if a data element is to be ignored by the sink, and is otherwise high; simultaneously with the sending of data element stream, sending a second binary signal from the sink to the source, where the second binary signal is low if the data element is not accepted by the sink, and is otherwise high; and simultaneously with the sending of the data element stream, sending a third binary signal to the sink, where the third binary signal marks a beginning and an end of a logical group of data elements within the data element stream.

Abstract: In 3GPP LTE, user equipment must be able to report reference signal received power (RSRP) measurement to the serving cell's base station. A low-complexity method for asynchronous RSRP measurement in an LTE user equipment receiver is provided which includes frequency shifting the received signal so that the upper or lower half band becomes centered around the DC frequency; decimating the received signal to a width of n·2m samples, n being the reference symbol spacing in the received signal; dividing the samples into n sample vectors with a length of 2m each, superimposing the n sample vectors; and performing FFT operation on the superimposed signal.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for uplink data transmission in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) compliant communication system use beam-forming in the uplink to increase the range of LTE compliant wireless communication terminals. Methods are provided for steering the beam in an optimal direction towards the base station, both for time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) communication schemes.

Abstract: A mobile station receiving a signal from a base station experiences time/frequency varying channel conditions. In order to get the maximum throughput from a base-station, it is necessary to adjust the modulation and coding schemes to the actual channel quality. To do so, mobile receivers are required to probe the radio channel condition and feedback a limited set of estimated channel state information parameters such as CQI, RI, and PMI. The invention uses modulation-specific mutual information as a basic metric for CQI-PMI-RI computation to yield high bandwidth efficiency under both flat fading and interference conditions as well as time and frequency selective fading and interference conditions, at reasonable complexity.

Abstract: A circuit arrangement includes a plurality of functional units each of which comprises a plurality of data processing modules and a local controller. The plurality of data processing modules run a common system clock and are connected by a streaming data bus running a handshake-type streaming data transfer protocol. A profiling module of the circuit arrangement assesses control signals tapped at predefined interfaces of the streaming data bus during real time operation, for determining link performance and communication patterns for profiling and debugging purposes, and hence constitutes a simple and low cost approach for assessing intra-component and inter-component link performance and communication patterns on large SoCs. A method for profiling data flow for use in such a circuit arrangement is also provided.

Abstract: A low complexity method for determining a search sequence of nodes for an efficient soft-decision sphere decoding algorithm for use in receivers for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) communication signals is achieved by determining a first member of the search sequence by rounding a received symbol (z) to a first constellation symbol (xc) of the QAM constellation, classifying the remaining constellation symbols (xi) of the QAM constellation into a plurality of sub-sets of constellation symbols having the same distance metric relative to said first constellation point (xc) according to a metric dsequ(n)=2a·n=max{|real(xc?xi)|,|imag(xc?xi)|}, a being a scaling factor of the constellation grid, and ordering said sub-sets of constellation symbols in ascending order of their distance metric relative to the first constellation symbol (xc), and ordering the members of each sub-set of constellation symbols that are defined by the same distance metric according to their Euclidean distances.

Abstract: An LTE baseband receiver and a method for operating the receiver are provided. The receiver comprises a frequency selective interference estimator, an interference level averager and an interference assessor operative to control which output of the frequency selective interference estimator or the interference level averager is to be supplied to a soft-metric calculator. Frequency selectivity of the interference is assessed, and the best mode of interference estimation is selected to increase LTE receiver performance in loaded networks without impacting receiver performance in unloaded networks.

Abstract: A method is provided for processing received data symbols in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission scheme, and an OFDM baseband receiver which performs this method, in order to support frequency selective noise estimation, especially in interference limited environments, and to offer improved estimation performance and reduced computational complexity.

Abstract: A hardware accelerator module is driven by a system processor via a system bus to sequentially process data blocks of a data stream as a function of a parameter set defined by the processor. The module includes a register block adapted to receive parameter sets from the system processor, an accelerator core adapted to receive streaming data, to process data blocks of said streaming data in a manner defined by a parameter set, and to output processed streaming data, and a parameter buffering block adapted to consecutively store a plurality of parameter sets and to sequentially provide the parameter sets to the hardware accelerator core as a function of a busy state of the hardware accelerator core. The parameter buffering block enables to reduce downtimes of hardware accelerators, to increase data throughput, and to reduce the risk of a processor overload in a processor which drives several hardware accelerators.

Abstract: A method for detecting validity of downlink control information in telecommunication user equipment and a decoder and baseband receiver to perform the method are provided. The object of avoiding falsely detecting payload data and misinterpreting them is achieved by reverse encoding a bit output sequence of a Viterbi decoder; determining hard bits from a soft-bit input sequence of the decoder; determining a bit count of real received bits; comparing the reverse encoded bit stream to the determined hard bit stream and counting the number of mismatches to obtain an error count; comparing a bit error rate which is defined as a quotient of the error count and the bit count against a predefined threshold value; and rejecting the payload as invalid if said bit error rate is above said threshold value, even if a cyclic redundancy check of the payload gives a correct result.

Abstract: A method is provided for decoding data packets in wireless communication schemes that use a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request technique, and a receiver for wireless communication that performs such a method. The HARQ memory incorporated in a receiver for wireless communication is minimized to a size which only reserves memory for an average number of erroneous sub-packets. Following decoding, an error check is performed on a per sub-packet basis, and only the softbits of those sub-packets for which decoding errors have been detected are stored in the HARQ memory. Correctly decoded sub-packets are stored in a separate memory. This significantly decreases the size of the HARQ memory required at the receiver which is beneficial in terms of both silicon area and power consumption.

Abstract: A method is provided for soft-decision sphere decoding for softbit computation which can be applied to all sphere decoding algorithms, in particular sphere decoding algorithms in any MIMO OFDM receiver implementations. Complexity reduction is achieved by using an approximate of linear Euclidean distances during the sphere decoding search. The method can be used in conjunction with MIMO OFDM communication systems like LTE, WiMax and WLAN.

Abstract: The invention relates to a circuit arrangement and to a method for testing same. A circuit arrangement is provided that includes a plurality of functional units which are coupled by at least one streaming data bus. Each of the functional units includes a plurality of hardware modules and a switch matrix. At least one of the streaming data busses is provided with a data width of at least that of the widest hardware module of any of the functional units of the circuit arrangement. The switch matrices are configurable to establish a streaming data path between and through the plurality of functional units which is used as a test link for any of the hardware modules of the circuit arrangement. The invention provides for non-intrusive real-time tracing in SoCs with a minimum of additional hardware resources and at low cost in terms of die size and power consumption.

Abstract: A mobile station receiving a signal from a base station experiences time/frequency varying channel conditions. In order to get the maximum throughput from a base-station, it is necessary to adjust the modulation and coding schemes to the actual channel quality. To do so, mobile receivers are required to probe the radio channel condition and feedback a limited set of estimated channel state information parameters such as CQI, RI, and PMI. The invention uses modulation-specific mutual information as a basic metric for CQI-PMI-RI computation to yield high bandwidth efficiency under both flat fading and interference conditions as well as time and frequency selective fading and interference conditions, at reasonable complexity.

Abstract: A method for detecting validity of downlink control information in telecommunication user equipment and a decoder and baseband receiver to perform the method are provided. The object of avoiding falsely detecting payload data and misinterpreting them is achieved by reverse encoding a bit output sequence of a Viterbi decoder; determining hard bits from a soft-bit input sequence of the decoder; determining a bit count of real received bits; comparing the reverse encoded bit stream to the determined hard bit stream and counting the number of mismatches to obtain an error count; comparing a bit error rate which is defined as a quotient of the error count and the bit count against a predefined threshold value; and rejecting the payload as invalid if said bit error rate is above said threshold value, even if a cyclic redundancy check of the payload gives a correct result.

Abstract: A method is provided for soft-decision sphere decoding for softbit computation which can be applied to all sphere decoding algorithms, in particular sphere decoding algorithms in any MIMO OFDM receiver implementations. Complexity reduction is achieved by using an approximate of linear Euclidean distances during the sphere decoding search. The method can be used in conjunction with MIMO OFDM communication systems like LTE, WiMax and WLAN.

Abstract: A low complexity method for determining a search sequence of nodes for an efficient soft-decision sphere decoding algorithm for use in receivers for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) communication signals is achieved by determining a first member of the search sequence by rounding a received symbol (z) to a first constellation symbol (xc) of the QAM constellation, classifying the remaining constellation symbols (xi) of the QAM constellation into a plurality of sub-sets of constellation symbols having the same distance metric relative to said first constellation point (xc) according to a metric dsequ(n)=2a·n=max{|real(xc?xi)|,|imag(xc?xi)|}, a being a scaling factor of the constellation grid, and ordering said sub-sets of constellation symbols in ascending order of their distance metric relative to the first constellation symbol (xc), and ordering the members of each sub-set of constellation symbols that are defined by the same distance metric according to their Euclidean distances.

Abstract: In 3GPP LTE, user equipment must be able to report reference signal received power (RSRP) measurement to the serving cell's base station. A low-complexity method for asynchronous RSRP measurement in an LTE user equipment receiver is provided which comprises frequency shifting the received signal so that the upper or lower half band becomes centered around the DC frequency; decimating the received signal to a width of n·2m samples, n being the reference symbol spacing in the received signal; dividing the samples into n sample vectors with a length of 2m each, superimposing said n sample vectors; and performing FFT operation on the superimposed signal.

Abstract: A hardware accelerator module is driven by a system processor via a system bus to sequentially process data blocks of a data stream as a function of a parameter set defined by the processor. The module includes a register block adapted to receive parameter sets from the system processor, an accelerator core adapted to receive streaming data, to process data blocks of said streaming data in a manner defined by a parameter set, and to output processed streaming data, and a parameter buffering block adapted to consecutively store a plurality of parameter sets and to sequentially provide the parameter sets to the hardware accelerator core as a function of a busy state of the hardware accelerator core. The parameter buffering block enables to reduce downtimes of hardware accelerators, to increase data throughput, and to reduce the risk of a processor overload in a processor which drives several hardware accelerators.

Abstract: A method is provided for processing received data symbols in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission scheme, and an OFDM baseband receiver which performs this method, in order to support frequency selective noise estimation, especially in interference limited environments, and to offer improved estimation performance and reduced computational complexity.