Massicotte, Daniel

The interactive development of algorithms and silicon architectures (VLSI – ASDSP, FPGA, ASIC) is a growing need for new generation telecommunication systems (LTE, 4G, WiMAX). The case of fourth generation (4G) wireless communications is one of the examples where the proposal of efficient algorithms integrated on silicon at the receiver becomes decisive in its deployment. Indeed, the multi-antenna transmission/reception systems (MIMO), the single and multiple user detection (MUD) and decoding algorithms proposed in the literature present such a complexity that they become almost impossible to implement in practice due to constraints of computation time, accuracy, power consumption, cost, etc.

It is therefore essential to offer receivers that meet both algorithm and silicon integration requirements (computational complexity, precision, fixed point, consumption, integration surface, etc.).

This problem concerns our applications of interest, in particular communication, measurement and control systems for linear and nonlinear problems such as non-blind and self-learning (blind) channel equalization, single and multiple user detection, MIMO, channel estimation, coding and precoding, signal reconstruction and deconvolution, voice activity detection, non-destructive evaluation and control laws.

Our projects reside in the development respecting the algorithm-architecture adequacy by algorithmic techniques of adaptive filtering facilitating integration on silicon such as regularity, recursion, parallelism, data flow, etc.

The methodology for implementing algorithms in VLSI technology consists of developing algorithm-architectures in interaction in order to arrive at an efficient solution by discerning the constraints in VLSI technology encountered during the study of the algorithms and the algorithmic constraints encountered during the study of the integration. To do this, systems on chip (SoC) and software-defined radio (SDR – Software-Defined Radio) have the advantages allowing to evaluate and validate the algorithm proposals for new generation systems such as 3G and 4G wireless systems, MUD, smart antennas, MIMO, etc.

Some topics of interest:
– Management and cancellation of multiple interferences
– Calculation in integer arithmetic (Fixed-Point)
– Rapid prototyping
– Algorithm-architecture adequacy
– MIMO systems (OFDM, CDMA) and adaptive antennas (beamforming)
– Linear and nonlinear adaptive filtering
– Fourier Transform (FFT) and Wavelets
– Evolutionary algorithms and metaheuristics
– Neural networks
– Fuzzy logic