Work

Real-Time and Scalable Zak-OTFS Receiver Processing on GPUs

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation offers superior robustness to high-mobility channels compared to conventional orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms. However, its explicit delay-Doppler (DD) domain representation incurs substantial signal processing complexity, especially with increased DD domain grid sizes. To address this challenge, we present a scalable, real-time Zak-OTFS receiver architecture on GPUs through hardware--algorithm co-design that exploits DD-domain channel sparsity. Our design leverages compact matrix operations for key processing stages, a branchless iterative equalizer, and a structured sparse channel matrix of the DD domain channel matrix to significantly reduce computational and memory overhead. These optimizations enable low-latency processing that consistently meets the 99.9-th percentile real-time processing deadline. The proposed system achieves up to 906.52 Mbps throughput with a DD grid size of (16384,32) using 16QAM modulation over 245.76 MHz bandwidth. Extensive evaluations under a Vehicular-A channel model demonstrate strong scalability and robust performance across CPU (Intel Xeon) and multiple GPU platforms (NVIDIA Jetson Orin, RTX 6000 Ada, A100, and H200), highlighting the effectiveness of compute-aware Zak-OTFS receiver design for next-generation (NextG) high-mobility communication systems.

Source: arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.02266

Authors: Zheng, Junyao, Tung, Chung-Hsuan, Yao, Yuncheng, Mehrotra, Nishant, Mattu, Sandesh, Qi, Zhenzhou, Zhuo, Danyang, Calderbank, Robert, Chen, Tingjun

Institution: Duke University

Topic: PAPR reduction in OFDM

Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Nvidia, Medical Research Council, Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems, Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Awards: Collaborative Research: NewSpectrum: Enabling Dense and In-Situ Spectrum Monitoring via Analog Correlators and Circuits-System Co-Design, G180343521, CIF: Small: NSF-DST: Zak-OTFS - How to Make Communication and Radar Sensing More Predictable in 6G, CAREER: Toward Efficient and Scalable Mobile Fronthaul Empowered by Analog Radio-over-Fiber, G4688056592, CC* Integration-Large: Scaling Scientific Workloads on Distributed Commodity GPUs and Storage through Campus-level RDMA Networking, G6754687387, Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: Softwarizing Millimeter-wave Radio Access Networks (RANs) at the Edge, CIRC: GRAND/ENS: COSMOS3: Enhancing and Sustaining the COSMOS Platform

OpenAlex ID: W7149004071

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