Evaluating GPU for Radio Algorithms : Assessing Performance and Power Consumption of GPUs in Wireless Radio Communication Systems

Sammanfattning: This thesis evaluates the viability of a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in tasks of signal processing associated with radio base stations in cellular networks. The development of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) is lengthy and highly expensive, but they are efficient in terms of power consumption. It was found that the GPU implementations could not compete with ASIC solutions in terms of power efficiency. The latency was too high for real-time signal processing applications like interpolation and decimation, especially because of the large sample buffers needed to occupy the GPU. Implementations for interpolation, decimation, and digital predistortion algorithms were developed using Nvidia’s parallel programming platform CUDA on an Nvidia RTX A4000 graphics card. The performances of the implementations were tested in terms of throughput, latency, and energy consumption.