WARP Architecture

WARP is a complete platform, designed from the ground up to meet the demands of high performance wireless systems research. The platform architecture consists of four key components:

WARP Hardware: Custom designed hardware tailored to the needs of high-performance wireless communications. The hardware provides resources capable of high speed DSP-intensive algorithm implementations, scalable interconnects for allocating more processing power as needed, and extensible peripheral options for radios, specialized processors and other expansion interfaces.

Platform Support Packages: Design tools and low-level interface modules designed to enable seamless use of the hardware by researchers at all layers of wireless network design.

Open-Access Repository: Central archive for all source code, models and hardware design files associated with WARP.

Research Applications: Implementation and evaluation of novel algorithms, enabled by WARP’s custom hardware and platform support packages. Full systems incorporating novel algorithms can be rapidly built using standard building block modules provided in the repository.

WARP’s modular and layered architecture ensures that the hardware components can benefit from advances in processor technology. The approach also enables algorithm implementations to be used on future hardware revisions without being re-designed, maximizing the impact of researchers’ implementation efforts.