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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Alex Yakovlev, Dr Terrence Mak
This is the final published version of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by IEEE, 2017.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Hybrid wired-wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC) has emerged as an alternative solution to the poor scalability and performance issues of conventional wireline NoC design for future System-on-Chip (SoC). Existing feasible wireless solution for WiNoCs in the form of millimeter wave (mm-Wave) relies on free space signal radiation which has high power dissipation with high degradation rate in the signal strength per transmission distance. Moreover, over the lossy wireless medium, combining wireless and wireline channels drastically reduces the total reliability of the communication fabric. Surface wave has been proposed as an alternative wireless technology for low power on-chip communication. With the right design considerations, the reliability and performance benefits of the surface wave channel could be extended. In this paper, we propose a surface wave communication fabric for emerging WiNoCs that is able to match the reliability of traditional wireline NoCs. First, we propose a realistic channel model which demonstrates that existing mm-Wave WiNoCs suffers from not only free-space spreading loss (FSSL) but also molecular absorption attenuation (MAA), especially at high frequency band, which reduces the reliability of the system. Consequently, we employ a carefully designed transducer and commercially available thin metal conductor coated with a low cost dielectric material to generate surface wave signals with improved transmission gain. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed communication fabric can achieve a 5 dB operational bandwidth of about 60 GHz around the center frequency (60 GHz). By improving the transmission reliability of wireless layer, the proposed communication fabric can improve maximum sustainable load of NoCs by an average of 20.9 and 133.3 percent compared to existing WiNoCs and wireline NoCs, respectively.
Author(s): Agyeman MO, Vien QT, Ahmadinia A, Yakovlev A, Tong KF, Mak T
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
Year: 2017
Volume: 28
Issue: 2
Pages: 359-373
Print publication date: 18/01/2017
Online publication date: 02/06/2016
Acceptance date: 24/05/2016
Date deposited: 13/02/2017
Publisher: IEEE
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2016.2575836
DOI: 10.1109/TPDS.2016.2575836
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