Design and Development of Virtex-6 FPGA Based DSP Hardware for FMCW Radar

Abstract

FMCW based Radar Altitude Sensor is used for measurement of altitude above the ground. The Antenna & Radome Assembly, RF Transceiver Module, DSP Module along with Power Supply Card are the main sub-systems of Radar Altitude Sensor. The function of DSP Module is to extract two way propagation delay and doppler shift from the received echo signal and thereby enable precise measurement of altitude as well as platform velocity. The earlier designs of FMCW Altitude Sensors were based on micro-controller/DSP processor while the contemporary designs are based on FPGA based DSP Hardware.

The assigned project work involves designing and prototyping of DSP Hardware for Radar Altitude Sensor. Virtex-6 FPGA (Make: Xilinx) has been selected for implementation of DSP algorithm and all peripheral interfaces. A comprehensive study of Virtex-6 FPGA and its evaluation board (ML-605, Make: Xilinx) has been carried out to finalize the scheme of interfacing. Following the finalization of interfaces, VHDL code has been developed to interface and configure various peripheral components with Virtex-6 FPGA. Peripheral component includes Analog to Digital Converter, Direct Digital Synthesizer, Phase Locked Oscillator and RS422 transceiver. The functionality of components has been tested and validated for intended application.