IWR1443: Virtual Channels in the context of CSI

Virtual Channels:

• The purpose of the Virtual Channels and associated Identifiers is to provide separate channels for different data flows that are interleaved in the data stream. The Virtual Channel identifier number is in the top two bits of the Data Identifier Byte.
• The Receiver will monitor the virtual channel identifier and de-multiplex the interleaved streams to their appropriate channel. On the receiver side this provides an efficient option to manage buffers
• A maximum of four data streams is supported; valid channels are 0 to 3. The virtual channel identifiers in the peripherals should be programmable to allow the host processor to control how the data streams are de-multiplexed.
• Each virtual channel has its own Frame Start and Frame End packet. Therefore, it is possible for different virtual channels to have different frame rates, though the data rate for both channels would remain the same.
• In addition, Data Type value Interleaving can be used for each virtual channel thereby allow different data types within a virtual channel and thus a second level of data interleaving.

The IWR1443 use case:

• Primary use case here is to stream raw ADC data on CSI interface. Now given that this source points for this data are four receive channels which are absolutely synchronized, data would be interleaved but effectively one would use a single Virtual channel