Scribd
Upload
74 views5 pages

Final Report EE 498 Fall 2015

The document describes a senior design project to create a wireless FPGA node. The project aims to allow an FPGA to be reprogrammed from a distance without wires. A Raspberry Pi will be used to receive files over WiFi and program the FPGA. Originally, an Arduino and Nordic radio modules were considered but proved too slow. The Mojo V3 FPGA board was selected due to its command line programming interface over SSH. The document outlines the project background, objectives, alternatives considered and components selected.

Uploaded by

AF91
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
74 views5 pages

Final Report EE 498 Fall 2015

The document describes a senior design project to create a wireless FPGA node. The project aims to allow an FPGA to be reprogrammed from a distance without wires. A Raspberry Pi will be used to receive files over WiFi and program the FPGA. Originally, an Arduino and Nordic radio modules were considered but proved too slow. The Mojo V3 FPGA board was selected due to its command line programming interface over SSH. The document outlines the project background, objectives, alternatives considered and components selected.

Uploaded by

AF91
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

EE498 Senior Design Project


Fall 2015

Wireless FPGA Node


Senior Design Final Project Report

Class instructor: Dr. Grzegorz Chmaj


Faculty advisor: Dr. Henry Selvaraj

Group Members:
First Name Last Name Major
Alan Fortes Computer Engineering
Andrew Tran Electrical Engineering
Victor Souza Electrical Engineering
I. Introduction & background
A field programmable gate array(FPGA) is a type of microchip which can
be configured to be any type of digital circuit, based on the programming that
has been uploaded to it. The FPGA is best suited for anyone who requires a
logic circuit to perform computation intensive digital processes, such as digital
video processing, motor control, or even parallel computing.
With drones and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs), becoming more
pervasive an useful in our society, It would advance this field of study to use
FPGAs in this application, to allow UAVs to perform tasks in parallel, and to
communicate with each other for performing tasks more efficiently, and for
expanding the capabilities of drones.

II. Abstract
Our goal is to introduce a simple and efficient way to expand the
functionality of the potential for FPGAs, by allowing an FPGA to be
reprogrammed from a distance, without any wires. We accomplished this by
creating a system that will allow someone to not only program an FPGA from
far away, but also to store pre-existing programming files onto the device we
created, along with having the capability to instantly change the values of
desired input/output pins, which will allow for us to modify of the behavior of
the FPGA to perform subtasks, based on the current programming of the
FPGA. We hope that this is a step forward in creating a system for parallel
node computing, particularly for unmanned aerial systems(UASs).

III. Current Market Solutions


So far, there have been two papers published concerning wirelessly
programmed FPGAs that have been implemented. More specific information
concerning these devices can be seen below, in Table 1.
Currently, there is no market for remotely configured FPGAs. However,
with the development of this device, we will usher in an era for wireless digital
configuration, providing on demand, reconfigurable devices, capable of
meeting the industry’s and hobbyists’ demand for instantly updating logic
devices, with new capabilities, whenever desired.
IV. Research results
For this project, it was originally intended to use a pair of Arduino boards
and Nordic Semiconductor transceivers to handle the transmission of files
from the home station to the away station, with the Arduino at the home
station parsing the data files and sending the data serially through the
transceiver, to the Arduino attached to the FPGA node. However, this proved
to be too slow, since it took about thirty minutes to send a one megabyte file
from the home station to the away station. Since time is a serious factor to
accomplish on demand programming, it was necessary to use a far more
efficient method to transmit files from one computer to another. Secure File
transfer protocol(SFTP), is a proven method for transferring files from
computer to computer, performed over a network. This method is fast, secure,
and guaranteed, when a secure network connection has been established
between two computers, with a suitable operating system. In order to
maintain design constraints, a small, robust, and fully functioning computer
will be necessary to act as a our file receiving component of our FPGA node.
The Raspberry Pi is a small, credit card sized computer, which runs a version
of Linux, based on the Debian operating system. The Raspberry Pi is capable
of establishing network connections between PCs and laptops via a personal
network. Raspian is fully capable of running command line interface
commands, much like Linux, which will be essential towards easily
programming the FPGA. Regarding the FPGA that would be best suited for
this project, the MojoV3 FPGA platform provided a convenient command line
interface to program the FPGA. Using an SSH interface, the Mojo, using a
software package, receives commands from our home station, through an ssh
shell. It was originally intended that we use the JTAG protocol to program the
FPGA, however,
we were composed by a Xilinx Spartan 6 development breakout board, a Wi-
Fi module, an SD card reader, and a flash memory unit, and an Arduino
board to coordinate the signals. We planned to use a JTAG protocol to
programing the FPGA board since its pins weren’t available to use.
So far, we realized that would cost a long time of research and a vast
knowledge on this type of protocol which any in our team had not.
Consequently, we figured out another short and more simplistic way to reach
for our purpose using two development boards. A Raspberry Pi and a Mojo
V3. The Raspberry pi because (….)
The Mojo V3 because (…)

Why we used a raspberry pi (An ARM-based computer on a small circuit


board) for this purpose? Which communication it uses with the FPGA?

Why we used a Mojo V3? Which language of programing we used?

V. Specification of the project

Functionality & conceptual design:


Architecture:
Design:
Simulation:
Testing:

VI. User’s manual


VII. Roles & skills in the project
VIII. Parts list
Items Reason Cost
Mojo V3 Development Board $ 75
Raspberry Pi 2 Development Board $ 35
Wi-Fi Adapter
SD Card Sandisk 128Gb

IX. Current form of a project


X. Project timeline
XI. Problems to solve
XII. Final remarks

You might also like