Ultra-wideband (UWB) is a well-known radio technology whose media access control (MAC) protocol, WiMedia MAC, has considerable potential to ensure high-speed and high-quality data communication for wireless personal area networks. However, these benefits involve a heavy computational workload, thereby posing a challenge to the conventional very-large-scale integration (VLSI) approach in terms of providing the required performance and power efficiency. Therefore, this study aims to optimise the VLSI implementation of the WiMedia MAC system by proposing a hybrid shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) architecture. The proposed solution combines the state-of-the-art MPSoC technology and application-specific instruction-set processor techniques to (i) accelerate the MAC protocol at task level by using parallel processing, (ii) enable the using of custom instructions to optimise the inter-processor communication by using an explicit message passing mechanism, and (iii) ease the implementation process by using a high-level software/hardware co-design methodology. The proposed platform is implemented on both system-level SystemC for architecture exploration and standard-cell technology for future chip implementation. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid MPSoC architecture achieves 24% performance improvement and 22% power savings over the conventional shared-memory-only one.

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applicationspecific instructionset processor techniques highspeed and highquality data communication wireless personal area networks hybrid sharedmemory and messagepassing multiprocessor systemonchip mpsoc architecture instructions uwb wellknown radio technology sharedmemoryonly one heavy computational workload task vlsi implementation stateoftheart mpsoc technology solution explicit message passing mechanism media access control mac protocol wimedia mac systemc interprocessor communication verylargescale integration vlsi approach highlevel softwarehardware codesign methodology platform parallel processing

Hao Xiao, Busheng Zheng, Hiroaki Kunieda, Tsuyoshi Isshiki,.Hybrid shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessor system-on-chip for UWB MAC layer. 11 (1),8-15.

Hao Xiao, et al."Hybrid shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessor system-on-chip for UWB MAC layer" 11

Hao Xiao, Busheng Zheng, Hiroaki Kunieda, Tsuyoshi Isshiki,"Hybrid shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessor system-on-chip for UWB MAC layer"