FPGA-Based Experimental Analysis of Fixed-Point Precision Impact on SOP Estimation in Coherent Communications Receivers

TL;DR

This paper experimentally analyzes how fixed-point precision in FPGA-based MIMO equalizers affects sensing and communication performance, revealing significant noise reduction and angular error improvements at 7-bit precision with hardware trade-offs.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the fixed-point precision trade-offs in FPGA implementations for coherent communication receivers.

Findings

At 7-bit precision, noise floor drops 100x

Angular error reduces by 63% at 7-bit

Communication performance saturates despite hardware complexity increase

Abstract

We experimentally evaluated the sensing-communication trade-off from the fixed-point precision MIMO equalizer using FPGA. At 7-bit, noise floor drops 100x and angular error 63%, but the communication performance saturates while the hardware complexity rises.