Chaining Communications Algorithms with Process Networks

Software Defined Radio (SDR) requires a reliable, fast and flexible method to chain parametrisable algorithms. Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is a design methodology, which offers exactly these properties. This paper explores the idea of using a Java implementation of CSP (JCSP) to model a flexible algorithm chain for Software Defined Radio. JCSP offers the opportunity to distribute algorithms on different processors in a multiprocessor environment, which gives a speed up and keeps the system flexible. If more processing power is required another processor can be added. In order to cope with the high data rate requirement of SDR, optimized data transfer schemes were developed. The goal was to increase the overall system efficiency by reducing the synchronisation overhead of a data transfer between two algorithms. To justify the use of CSP in SDR, a system incorporating CSP was compared with a conventional system, in single and multiprocessor environments.