Exposing Software Defined Radio Functionality To Native Operating System Applications via Virtual Devices

TL;DR

This paper introduces Proteus Virtual Devices, enabling native OS applications to transparently access reconfigurable hardware, thus broadening hardware utilization without requiring application modifications.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to expose reconfigurable hardware as virtual devices, allowing native applications to use them seamlessly without hardware-specific programming.

Findings

Reconfigurable hardware can be accessed transparently by native OS applications.

Proteus Virtual Devices facilitate hardware utilization without application modifications.

The approach broadens hardware accessibility in PC environments.

Abstract

Many reconfigurable platforms require that applications be written specifically to take advantage of the reconfigurable hardware. In a PC-based environment, this presents an undesirable constraint in that the many already available applications cannot leverage on such hardware. Greatest benefit can only be derived from reconfigurable devices if even native OS applications can transparently utilize reconfigurable devices as they would normal full-fledged hardware devices. This paper presents how Proteus Virtual Devices are used to expose reconfigurable hardware in a transparent manner for use by typical native OS applications.