Study of the Development and Performance of FPGA-based Communication Applications

Background:
TietoEnator Telsys in Karlstad is a major supplier of telecom signaling solutions to telecom equipment manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Siemens. In the recent several years, more and more of the signaling protocols are realized in silicon, not only the physical and data link layers of the OSI stack, but also layer 3, the network layer, and layer 4, the transport layer. To meet this trend, TietoEnator Telsys has started looking at FPGA-based signaling platforms.

Problem Statement:
To learn the design and implementation process of FPGA-based communication applications. Further, to evaluate the performance of FPGA-based communication applications, and compare their performance with similar server-based solutions.

Execution:
1.Get acquainted with the Xilinx Spartan-3E development board by experimenting with the adhering labs.
2.Setup a hardware platform using the Xilinx Spartan-3E development board, and document the procedure.
3.Construct a simple communication application atop the hardware platform setup in Step 2, and a corresponding application on a PC or Sun workstation.
4.Design and execute a performance experiment using the communication applications developed in Step 3, and document the outcome of the experiment.

More information could be obtained from
http://www.tietoenator.se (Jobbforum/student)