Integrating Design and Test for Next-

Generation Communications Systems

Dr. James Truchard

CEO, National Instruments

2

NI Overview

Founded in 1976 and HQ in Austin, TX

30+ years growth and profitability

• $873M revenue in 2010 (+29% YOY) and 17% operating income

• $253M revenue in Q2 2011 (+20% YOY)

6,000+ employees; operations in 50+ countries

FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 12 consecutive years

Strong investment in R&D for new product development

Over 30,000 customers

Over 7000 universities

3

The Virtual Instrumentation Approach

The Software Is the Instrument

4

NI’s History in Automated Test

Control Traditional Instruments

Complete System Platform

Simple PC-Based Measurements

PC Data Acquisition

LabVIEW RT, FPGA

PXI System Platform

GPIB Instrument Control

LabVIEW Software

1980s 1990s 2000s

TestStand

5

Vacuum Tube Transistor (Integrated Circuit)

Software

1920

General Radio

Hewlett Packard

National Instruments

1965 2010

Evolution of Instrumentation

6

Acc

urac

y (B

its)

26

24

22

20

18

16

14

12

10

8

4 1 10 100 1K 10K 100K 1M 10M 100M 1G 10G 100G

Sampling Rate (S/s)

6

Traditional Instruments NI Products, 2011 NI Products, 2004 NI Products, 1995

Phase Matrix Products and Technology

Expanding Measurement Capabilities

7

Graphical System Design

The National Instruments Vision

Real-Time Systems

Software-Defined Radio

Embedded Monitoring

Hardware-in-the-loop

Test and Measurement

Automated Test

Data Acquisition

Reconfigurable

Instruments

Industrial and Embedded

Industrial Control (PAC)

Machine Control

Electronic Devices

“To do for embedded what the PC

did for the desktop.”

“To do for test and measurement

what the spreadsheet did

for financial analysis.”

8

Hardware APIs

Programming Approaches

Analysis Libraries

Deployment Targets

A Highly Productive Graphical Development Environment for Engineers and Scientists

Custom User Interfaces

Technology Abstractions

9

LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT

“the smartest, coolest toy

of the year”

CERN Large Hadron Collider

“the most powerful instrument on earth”

Empowering Users Through Software

10

Scalable Software Abstraction A

bstr

actio

n

System Complexity

Machine Code

Assembly Language

C

C++

C#

System Design Platform

11

Large Telescope

Mirror Control Tokomak

Plasma Control

Wind Turbine Sound

Source Characterization Early Cancer

Detection

Challenges in Signal Processing

12

Example: Tokamak – Shape Control

RjZRRR

R o

2

21

Shape

Reconstruction

Tomography

Soft X-Rays

Magnetic

Sensors

Bolometric

Sensors

Grad-Shafranov

Solver

Controller PID, MIMO

Target Shape

13

World’s First Real-Time OCT Imaging

• Using PXI for Optical Coherent Tomography

• Combining 320 simultaneous channels,

• Uses FPGA’s and GPU’s for 3D imaging

• LabVIEW performing >700,000 FFT/sec

• Enables early cancer detection

Rendered 3D fingerprint image

“We leveraged the flexibility and scalability of the PXI

platform and NI FlexRIO to develop the world’s first

real-time 3D OCT imaging system.”

- Dr. Kohji Ohbayashi

14

Controlling the World’s Largest Telescope

1.87 TFLOPs

[5k x 56k] x 56k every 300μs

64 compute nodes (512 cores)

14k samples

every 2 ms

Group of 4

compute nodes

5k samples

every 2 ms

3 additional

“stars”

15

LabVIEW

`̀

Real-Time

LabVIEW

Desktop

LabVIEW

FPGA

LabVIEW

MPU/MCU

System Design to Deployment

Personal Computers PXI Systems CompactRIO Single-Board RIO

Dataflow C / HDL Code Textual Math Simulation Statechart

Custom Design

16

• Integrate existing .m code in LabVIEW

• Easily connect simulation to hardware

Using .m Files in LabVIEW

MIMO Channel Estimation

17

GSM/EDGE 3G LTE

2000

Evolution of Wireless Technology

2005 2010

500 kbps 40 Mbps 300 Mbps Downlink

Data Rate

1 GOPS 100 GOPS 1 TOPS Handset

Complexity

18

Architectures for High-Performance Computing

Supervisory Node

Computing Nodes

Actuators

Sensors

Actuators

Sensors

Actuators

Sensors

Actuators

Sensors

Actuators

Sensors

Actuators

Sensors

Multicore CPU

Multicore CPU

GPU GPU

FPGA

FPGA

Visualization

(User Interface)

19

CPU

Performance

(GFLOPs)

FPGA

Performance

(GMACs)

1997 2001 2002 2004 2005 2006 2009 1999

5

50

500

5,000

5

50

500

5,000

FPGAs

CPUs

2010

6.737 TMACS

2011

Parallel Architectures Drive Performance

20

FPGAs Multicore

Processors

Task Parallelism Data Parallelism Pipelining

Parallel Programming with LabVIEW

21

How We Map Problems … Model of Computation to Idea / Platform

Pipelined Execution (Signal Analysis)

Distributed Calculation (Finite Difference Method)

Parallel Calculation

(Dense Linear Algebra)

22

NI RF 6 GHz

P2P

FPGA

RIO Host

Embedded, PC

RF RIO

NI SDR NI FlexRIO

USRP for

LabVIEW NI RF VSG

NI Platforms for RF/Communications

23

LabVIEW Development Environment

with Connectivity to 3rd-party Math Software

NI Platform for Signal Processing and Communication

Textual (MathScript)

Signal Processing and Analysis

Graphical (Dataflow)

Signal Processing and Analysis

JTFA, Wavelet,

Time-Series Analysis

Signal Processing

for Measurements

Digital Filter Design,

Adaptive Filter Design

Communications

Modulation, Coding, …

cRIO, cDAQ PXI FlexRIO PC/Mac NI SPEEDY-33

TI DSK

Sound Card /

Web Cam

Control Design,

Dynamic Simulation

Real-Time Image

Processing / Vision Sound & Vibration

24

Modulation Toolkit

Modulation and Demodulation

Channel modeling and impairments

Channel coding and decoding

Channel coding and decoding

LabVIEW simulation and modeling tools

for communication system design

25

Typical Communications System

Communications Channel

Source Coding Channel Coding Modulation Upconversion

Downconversion Demodulation Channel Decoding Source Decoding

Bits Bits Bits

Bits Bits Bits

Transmitter

Receiver

26

Communications System in LabVIEW

Receiver

Communications Channel Channel Model

Transmitter

27

NI Modulation Toolkit

NI Modulation Toolkit

NI USRP

NI USRP

Digital Communication System

28

NI USRP at Stanford University

…with the NI USRP, we’re able to

provide exposure in introductory

courses for the first time.

“ “

Dr. Sachin Katti

[ Electrical Engineering & Computer Science ]

Students rated the class 4.94/5.0,

likely making it one of the highest

ratings among all classes in the

School of Engineering at Stanford.

“ “

29

Libraries for Communications Standards

30

LTE Advanced: 8x8 MIMO

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Tx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx

OFDM

Rx 8x8 MIMO Wireless Channel

MIMO

Encoder

Carrier 1

MIMO

Encoder

Carrier 2

MIMO

Decoder

Carrier 1

MIMO

Decoder

Carrier 2

Two- channel carrier aggregation (40 MHz) yields > 1 Gbps

31

Traditional Test Bed • 8x8 MIMO

• 80 Mbps Data Rate

• 5 MHz Bandwidth

Six 18-inch Racks

PXI Approach • 8x8 MIMO

• ~1000 Mbps Data Rate

• 2 x 20 MHz Carrier Aggregation

>10x performance at 1/10 cost

Two 18-inch PXI Chassis

LTE Advanced Downlink Testbed

32

Implementing 8x8 LTE-A Downlink in PXI

4x

5762

FAM

8x

PXIe-

5601

4x P

XIe

-796

5R F

lexR

IOs

P2P

MIMO

Decoder

MIMO

Decoder

MIMO

Enc

& Mod

MIMO

Enc

& Mod

OFDM

OFDM

OFDM

OFDM

8x

5781

FAM

8x

PXIe-

5611

8x P

XIe

-796

5R F

lexR

IOs

P2P

>1GB/s Over

PXIe Back-

plane

>1GB/s Over

PXIe Back-

plane

33

LabVIEW DSP

Design Module Early Access Program

HDL/RTL LabVIEW Today

Platforms for Communication

System Design

34

Future Communication System Design

35

The Next 25 Years – The Expanding Role of LabVIEW into System Design

36

Future of RF System Design

RF/Microwave Circuit Design

Electromagnetic Simulation

Link Budget Analysis

System simulation

Real-time Control

FPGA prototype

37

AWR Overview

38

Accelerating Time to Market

Research/Modeling Design/Simulation Verification/Validation Manufacturing

Product Verification Design Verification

Measurements to

create models

“Hardware in the Loop” to

improve simulations Verification Test Production Test

39

Linking Design and Test

40

Signal Generator Signal Analyzer DUT

Linking Design and Test

NI in Industry and Academia

42

Previous Characterization Test Bench PXI-Hybrid Characterization Test Set

Original Test Time PXI Test Time Speedup

GSM Test 6 sec 1.1 sec 6x

EDGE Test 14 sec 1.1 sec 14x

WCDMA Test 9 sec 1.1 sec 9x

Linking Design and Test

43

Cost

Previous Solution PXI Solution Improvement

RF Analyzer + SW $85,000 $29,999 2.8X

RF Generator + SW $77,000 $23,999 3.2X

Total Cost $162,000 $54,000 3X

Test Time

Test Previous Solution PXI Solution Improvement

WCDMA ACP 400 ms 30 ms 13X

LTE EVM 1.2 s 390 ms 3X

Total Time 3 day 8 hrs 10X

"The new test automation platform built on NI TestStand and LabVIEW helped us reduce

the time necessary to validate an RFIC from two months to three weeks."

– Sylvain Bertrand, ST-Ericsson

Testing NovaTHOR 3G/4G

44

Integrated Design and Test (2005) 4G MIMO-OFDM Wireless Prototyping

“The motivation in the design of this flexible prototype is that students

should have a mechanism for testing theoretical work with practical

implementations, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice.”

45

• UT Austin – Prof. Sriram Vishwanath

• Objectives

Create a test bed for interference

alignment experimentation

Latest breakthrough in information theory

• Rate increases linearly with no. of users

Test practical viability

Interference Alignment Research (Today)

46

• Virginia Tech. – Prof. Tamal Bose, Prof. Jeff Reed

• Objectives

Implement spectrum sensing on FPGA

Blind modulation classification using cumulant method

Develop cognitive engine for high-speed rail application

New Advances in Cognitive Radio

47

{H}

RF A/D Matched

Filter N FFT

Buffer

RF

RF

N FFT

Joint

Decoding

MMSE

Filter

Frame

Buffer

Soft Bit

Estimates

Soft Bit

Estimates

MMSE

Preprocessing

Channel

Estimation

MMSE

Filter

Frequency

Offset

Estimation

Pilots MMSE

coeffs

LabVIEW

RT/FPGA Custom

VHDL

UC Berkeley –

Prof. Borivoje Nikolic

Prof. David Tse

Techniques for improving capacity –

advanced coding techniques, encoder

and decoder design

Source

Relay

Destination

Matched

Filter

Cooperative MIMO Receiver

National Instruments NI Confidential