Long-term solution for Xilinx Viterbi IP license in openwifi?

[silabs-ArturB]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been exploring openwifi, and I understand from the README and other discussions that the receiver uses the Xilinx Viterbi Decoder IP, which runs under an evaluation license.

I’m also aware of the ~2 hour limitation, and that people usually just reload the FPGA or power-cycle to restart the decoder. But I’m trying to understand how groups working with openwifi handle the license in the long term, after (to my knowledge) the evaluation period expires (e.g., 120 days or beyond).

• Do most research groups eventually upgrade to a full, valid license once the evaluation period ends?
• Or do they typically obtain academic or institutional licenses through AMD/Xilinx’s university programs for continued use?
• Alternatively, have teams had success replacing the Xilinx Viterbi core with an open-source or custom RTL implementation to avoid long-term licensing issues?

[JiaoXianjun]

I guess you can re-apply/re-new the evaluation license after it expires.

[silabs-ArturB]

Thank you for the quick answer! One additional question: The information on whether they grant the license again (and again?) is very vague to me. Do you happen to have experience with this? Does one always get the license every time they apply?

[HavingaThijs]

As far as we know, you can reapply an unlimited amount of times. We are doing this for several years now.

Some master thesis students have explored replacing the Viterbi decoder as well: https://github.com/BaimingZhang26213/viterbi_decoder It works in simulation, but has not been run successfully on a board yet.