Project Summary

It is well known that the increase in data rate and heterogeneous transport in wireless networks demands very efficient coding schemes, coupled with adaptive resource allocation strategies.

Beside the recent progress made these last 15 years, coded modulation schemes presenting near-Shannon performance at high spectral efficiency with short blocks are still missing. Besides, whilst most of the European technology has focused on Turbo-Codes (3GPP, DVB-RCS, IEEE 802.16), it has facilitated as a side effect development of the competing technology, namely LDPC codes worldwide (3GPP2, DVB-S2, IEEE 802.16e, IEEE 802.11n).

In order to ensure and comfort European supremacy in enabling technologies mandatory for future commication systems, the DaVinci project planned to go beyond usual LDPC codes, and developed breakthrough channel coding, together with tailored Link Level technologies.

The DaVinci solution is based on systems which completely operate using high order non-binary symbols, in all receiver blocks. However, the performance gain comes at the expense of increased hardware complexity, and tailored link level technologies. As a result, low complexity non-binary LDPC codes/decoders have been developed in the DaVinci project, and compared in a realistic framework, using a versatile FPGA implementation and real link using a MIMO-OFDM platform.


The major achievements of the DAVINCI project are presented towards the five main objectives set, namely,

  1. Development of new structures of non-binary LDPC codes;
  2. Development of adapted link procedures;
  3. Design of adequate algorithm and architecture for low cost implementation;
  4. Quantification of the performance assessments using IMT-Advanced compliant link and system level platforms; and
  5. Real-time demonstration of DAVINCI codec on wireless platform.

Overall, the project delivered nearly 50 technical reports, filed 4 intellectual property rights applications, and published more than 40 articles in journals and international conferences (with nearly 10 articles still ongoing for later publications).

 

The commercial exploitation also looks quite promising and future collaborations on promising topics beyond DAVINCI are expected. In summary, the DAVINCI technology was shown to have a great potential for use in next generation wireless multimedia communication systems. This non-binary technology is found quite promising candidate to replace the binary technology in the long run. The DAVINCI project succeeded in setting up the foundations of Non-binary Digital Wireless communications which are believed to be a key enabler for reaching the high demand in spectral efficiency for next generation wireless multimedia communication systems. The DAVINCI project will certainly serve as key reference for continued and future exploration of the potential of non-binary technology for wireless communications but also for other communication media.

 

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