With digital signal processing (DSP) requirements increasing for military system components such as electronic sensors, FPGAs provide a scalable platform for high-performance processing with the highest power efficiency of any solution. Altera® FPGAs and HardCopy® ASICs, intellectual property (IP) cores, design tools, and extensive support provide the resources you need to efficiently build systems that perform operations in parallel on data streams. You'll also meet the power, weight, space, complexity, and cost challenges of radar, electronic warfare, and a host of other military DSP applications.
DSP Sensor-Based Solutions
See Table 1 for the latest product offerings to support proposal generation.
| Table 1. Military DSP Sensor-Based Solutions | ||
| Focus | Offering | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Silicon | Altera has a spectrum of devices capable of performing critical military DSP functions for large military systems | |
| Tools and IP |
|
End-to-end tool flow supports demanding military DSP requirements for radar, electronic warfare, and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) applications |
| Customer relationships |
|
Altera has a comprehensive investment strategy for military DSP customers |
| Partnerships | Altera is engaged with partners for system solution development | |
Altera provides technical support and device selection assistance to aid proposal generation. We also have dedicated DSP technology specialists who can help with hardware/software development, service, and sustainment. This level of support can alleviate technical and schedule risks, the impact of lengthy development cycles, and more.
Figure 1 depicts a generic high-performance sensor design incorporating several 28-nm Stratix V FPGAs. Stratix V FPGAs deliver up to 1,840 GMAC/s DSP performance and 1,000 sustained GFLOPs for matrix multiplication, making them ideal for supporting sensor and DSP functions in military applications.
Figure 1. High-Density FPGAs Incorporate More Sensor and DSP Functions
High-performance sensor designs typically interface to high-performance analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). These systems are usually marked by GFLOPs/sec worth of processing with varying degrees of precision for the datapath at the ADC (such as 8 bits), growing from 18 bits up to 36 bits, and possibly into floating-point ranges. FPGAs with a serializer/deserializer (SERDES) can enable high-speed chip-to-chip communication. Multiple soft processors can provide real-time decision-based algorithm control.
Shortening Time to Market for Military DSP Applications
The combination of our custom logic devices, design tools, and support can increase your military DSP design productivity. Examples include:
- Military sensor DSP algorithms in an FPGA
- Video processing on FPGAs for military EO/IR applications
Military Sensor DSP Algorithms in an FPGA
With a new capability in our DSP Builder system integration tool—called DSP Builder Advanced Blockset—you can now automate the steps to optimize a military sensor DSP algorithm in an FPGA. DSP Builder Advanced Blockset takes a high-level behavioral description of the DSP algorithm using the Simulink tool from The MathWorks, and allows the algorithm's signal flow to be described in a model form.
By controlling the design process via top-level design parameters, the tool capability makes changing clock rates, increasing or decreasing the number of channels, and changing FPGA families an easy process that involves just a few clicks and a recompile.
Video Processing on FPGAs for Military EO/IR Applications
Low-cost, low-power FPGAs—such as Cyclone® III devices and Cyclone IV devices—are ideal for next-generation night vision, thermal imaging, head-mounted and avionics displays, and other EO/IR systems. These devices feature:
- Inherently parallel DSP blocks
- An abundance of embedded memory blocks
- A large number of registers
- High-speed memory interfaces
To increase your design productivity and shorten time to market, we complement our devices with IP cores, reference designs, development kits, and system-level design tools that facilitate rapid design, development, and prototyping of EO/IR systems.
Related Links
- Automating DSP Simulation and Implementation of Military Sensor Systems white paper (PDF)
- Assessing FPGA DSP Benchmarks at 40 nm white paper (PDF)
- Designing and Using FPGAs for Double-Precision Floating-Point Math white paper (PDF)
- Video Processing on FPGAs for Military Electro-Optical/Infrared Applications white paper (PDF)
- FPGA Run-Time Reconfiguration: Two Approaches white paper (PDF)
- Designing Military DSP Applications solution sheet (PDF)
- DSP Builder Advanced Blockset solution sheet (PDF)
- Video and Image Processing Solutions for Military Applications solution sheet (PDF)
