Parallel and Pipeline Multicore OFDM Baseband Processor for Wideband UOWC Systems

Optical wireless communication (OWC) has been considered a promising solution for overcoming the spectrum limitations of RF in wireless communication. However, studies on OWC systems, particularly on actual real-time prototyping, are limited and only focus on simulation and experiments using waveform generators and oscilloscopes. Meanwhile, the data rate requirements for optical communication systems are rapidly increasing, approaching the Gbps range. Therefore, the development of real-time prototypes with high data speeds is essential and requires super sample rates (SSR), necessitating signal processing blocks capable of processing multiple samples in parallel within a single clock cycle while operating at very high clock frequencies. To address these requirements, this work proposes a parallel implementation of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) baseband processor on an FPGA for OWC systems. The proposed system operates with a bandwidth of 320 MHz, achieving a maximum raw data rate of 720 Mbps at 16-QAM 3/4 modulation. This performance is comparable to that of the IEEE 802.11be WiFi 7 standard. The proposed system is applicable not only to underwater OWC but also for indoor OWC (e.g. Li-Fi), broadening its potential use cases in next-generation wireless communication networks.