White Gaussian Noise Generator

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Abstract

Software estimation of the performances of a communication system is very time-consuming. Moreover, many variables (sampling frequency, digital format, carrier resolution, rounding and quantization etc.) have to be optimized for satisfying the best trade-off between performances and complexity. In order to speed up the final parameter optimization of a design, we propose to perform direct hardware simulation (emulation) on an FPGA. Such a simulation needs a hardware emulation of the communication channel.

To do so, we have designed a hardware White Gaussian Noise Generator (WGNG) in a FPGA circuit. High accuracy, fast and low-cost hardware are reached by combining the Box-Muller and Central limit methods. The design is fully parameterizable and the  performance of the WGNG is entirely caracterized with a MATLAB program.

This WGNG is also used to generate more complex channels, such as Rayleigh channel and Rice channel.

For more information, you can download the slides of a talk given at the university of Toronto(Aug. 2001): Cider seminar

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Collaboration

This work is the result of a joined research project carried out by : ------

Related papers

  1. E. Boutillon, J.L. Danger, A. Gazel, " Design of High Speed AWGN Communication Channel Emulator" Kluwer Press, Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing 34(2): 133-142; Feb 2003
  2. D. Derrien, E. Boutillon," "Quality Measurement of a Colored Gaussian Noise Generator Hardware Implementation Based on Statistical Properties", IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology, Maroc, Déc. 2002.
  3. E. Boutillon, D. Derrien, "Implémentation hardware d’un générateur de bruit de Rayleigh coloré", Journées Francophones sur l’Adéquation Algorithme Architecture, Tunisie, Déc. 2002.
    4. .
  4. A. Gazel, E. Boutillon, J.L. Danger, G. Gulak, H. Lamaari,"Design and performance analysis of a high speed AWGN Communication Channel Emulator" (PACRIM'01), Victoria, British Colombia, Canada, August 2001
  5. J.L Danger, A. Ghazel, E. Boutillon H. Laamari,"Efficient FPGA Implementation of Gaussian Noise Generator for Communication Channel Emulation", The 7th IEEE International Conference on Electronicsm Circuits & Systemes (ICECS'2K), , Kaslik, Lebanon, Dec 2000
  6. E. Boutillon, A. Gazel, J.L. Danger, G. Gulak, H. Laamari, " Un générateur de bruit blanc gaussien sur un FPGA pour la simulation rapide de systèmes de transmissions", 14ième Colloque du GRETSI, Toulouse Sept. 2001
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Sources files

The MATLAB source file can be directly downloaded:

  1. Method using 2's complement
  2. Method using 1's complement (as in VHDL files)

The VHDL source files are free under a GPL licence, please, send an email at emmanuel.boutillon@univ-ubs.fr with the subjet "request for WGNG source files" and you will receive the source files by email (so far, you have been more than 200 hundred to download the files).

All you comments and improvements on this WEB site and the source files are welcom.

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Generic Hardware Random Generator

With Cedric Marchand (a former Ms. Degree), we have improved and made a VHDL implementation of the very efficient technic of [1] and more recently, the technic proposed by David B. Thomas and Wayne Luk [2] to perform a generic random generator.

This new generic random generator has the following features:

  1. FPGA implementation with a very low hardware cost;
  2. it can emulate every type of continuous distributions with the desire precision;
  3. it has also capabilities to emulate non continuous distribution (P(X=x) = \alpha * exp(-x), x > 0, P(X=x) = 1/sqrt(1-x^2), -1
If you have question about this new architecture (matlab and VHDL files), please, send an email at emmanuel.boutillon@univ-ubs.fr with the subjet "Question about the Generic Hardware Random Generator"

[1] A.J. Walker, "An efficient method for generation discrete random varialbes with general distribution", ACM, Trans. Math. Software 3, pp 253-56, 1977. [2] Non-Uniform Random Number Generation Through Piecewise Linear Approximations, "International Conference onField Programmable Logic and Applications, 2006. FPL '06. , pp 1-6, Aug. 2006.

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Related link

This section gives more information on WGNG generators

  1. XILINX IP core
  2. COMBLOCK IP core
  3. A gaussian noise generator for hardware based simulation", D. Lee et al, IEEE trans. on computer, vol 53, n° 12,dec. 04.
  4. D. Lee homepage
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