Wunkus

Design: WUNKUS is the first multi-subcarrier massive multi-user (MU) MIMO OFDM data detector ASIC reported in the open literature. It implements an architecture that exploits frequency-domain correlation through linear interpolation and beamspace sparsity through dynamic power-saving mechanisms, enabling the efficient processing of multiple OFDM subcarriers in parallel. By combining these techniques, WUNKUS achieves up to a 3× reduction in area and power, making parallel multi-subcarrier detection practical for 5G and emerging 6G systems. The ASIC is designed for a 64-antenna base station communicating with 8 user equipments while processing 16 subcarriers in parallel. It supports QPSK to 256-QAM with soft outputs.

Design team: Abhishek Kumar, Seyed Hadi Mirfarshbafan, Oscar Castaneda, Christoph Studer

Paper:  Abhishek Kumar, Seyed Hadi Mirfarshbafan, Oscar Castaneda, Christoph Studer, "external page A 39pJ/b 7.3 Gbps 1.3mm2 Multi-Subcarrier Massive MU-MIMO-OFDM Detector Exploiting Beamspace Sparsity and Frequency-Domain Correlation in 22FDX", IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits, June 2026.