The Application of Programmable DSPs in Mobile Communications

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Introduction

Edgar Auslander and Alan Gatherer

This book is about two technologies that have had, and will increasingly have, a significant impact on the way we all live, learn and play: personal wireless communications and signal processing. When it comes to both markets, history has shown that reality has often surprised the most optimistic forecasters.

We draw on the experience of experts from MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, INRIA, Authentec, Radioscape, Geovector and Texas Instruments, to give a description of some of the important building blocks and implementation choices that combine both technologies, in the past and in the future. We highlight different perspectives, especially regarding implementation issues, in the processing of speech, audio, video, future multimedia and location-based services as well as mobile commerce and security aspects.

The book is roughly divided into three sections:

• Chapters describing applications and their implementations on what might be described as “today's” technology. By this, we mean the use of programmable Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) and ASICs in the manner in which they are being used for today's designs. In these chapters, we highlight the applications and the role of programmable DSPs in the implementation.
• Chapters that present challenges to the current design flow, describing new ways of achieving the desired degree of flexibility in a design by means other than programmable DSPs. Whether these new ...