A Layered Reconfigurability Concept for DS-CDMA High Data Rate Communication Links

Reconfigurability is a recent research topic. It enables terminals and network elements to dynamically change their functional behaviour in order to optimize jointly performance and computational requirements. It is a multidimensional concept and its algorithmic and hardware expressions generate confusion in definition. In this paper, we try to clarify these confusing terms by defining reconfigurability as a two-layer concept. These two layers are well-defined and are essential concepts for the design of any reconfigurable system. The connection and interplay between them is a subject of different approaches which generate different reconfigurable platforms. Our proposed approach supposes an overlap and a serial processing between the supporting algorithms and its simple and efficient implementation appears to be suitable for digital communication applications. A complete example for a reconfigurable direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) receiver for high data rates is presented and analyzed. The case demonstrates the value of our reconfigurable concept and interplay approach.