Abstract: A method for designing a time-sliced and multi-threaded architecture comprises the steps of conducting a thorough analysis of a range of applications and building a specific processor to accommodate the range of applications. In one embodiment, the thorough analysis includes extracting real time aspects from each application, determining optimal granularity in the architecture based on the real time aspects of each application, and adjusting the optimal granularity based on acceptable context switching overhead.

Abstract: A rake receiver in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of this invention is configurable by an external agent (e.g., microcontroller, DSP, or state machine) to suit the particular requirements of different spread spectrum systems. In an exemplary embodiment, the receiver includes multiple fingers. Each finger includes a plurality of generic despreaders/descramblers, a plurality of generic dechannelizers coupled to the despreaders/descramblers, and at least one timing estimation controller coupled to the despreaders/descramblers. The finger also includes at least one phase estimation controller, at least one frequency estimation controller, and at least one energy estimation controller all coupled to the generic dechannelizers.

Abstract: A wireless TDMA communication platform for processing a communication signal is disclosed herein. The platform includes a sampler for sampling a TDMA signal, received from a transmission channel; a derotator for correcting for frequency offset in the sampled TDMA signal; a matched filter for correcting for the response of the transmission channel in the received TDMA signal; an equalizer to which is applied an output signal from the matched filter; a deinterleaver to deinterleave the received TDMA signal; and a channel decoder for decoding the received TDMA signal after it is deinterleaved.