Parallel Digital Predistortion Design on Mobile GPU and Embedded Multicore CPU for Mobile Transmitters

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how modern mobile GPU and multicore CPU can be effectively utilized to implement high data rate digital predistortion for mobile transmitters, improving spectral suppression with efficient parallel processing.

Contribution

It introduces a parallel DPD implementation on mobile GPU and multicore CPU, optimizing processing for mobile transmitters and verifying its effectiveness experimentally.

Findings

High data rate DPD implementation on mobile processors achieved.

Significant spectral suppression demonstrated on real hardware.

Parallel computing techniques enhanced processing efficiency.

Abstract

Digital predistortion (DPD) is a widely adopted baseband processing technique in current radio transmitters. While DPD can effectively suppress unwanted spurious spectrum emissions stemming from imperfections of analog RF and baseband electronics, it also introduces extra processing complexity and poses challenges on efficient and flexible implementations, especially for mobile cellular transmitters, considering their limited computing power compared to basestations. In this paper, we present high data rate implementations of broadband DPD on modern embedded processors, such as mobile GPU and multicore CPU, by taking advantage of emerging parallel computing techniques for exploiting their computing resources. We further verify the suppression effect of DPD experimentally on real radio hardware platforms. Performance evaluation results of our DPD design demonstrate the high efficacy of modern general purpose mobile processors on accelerating DPD processing for a mobile transmitter.