A hybrid-computing architecture using FPGAs collects, processes, and reports data from acoustic and other sensors.

A novel microsensor processing architecture allows a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to act as a reprogrammable preprocessor or coprocessor to a general-purpose processor (GPP). The FPGA does most of the computationally complex pieces of the algorithm, while the GPP is lightly loaded, performing control, communications, and housekeeping tasks (Figure 1). The flexible architecture supports a wide range of low-power applications, while still being able to leverage emerging commercial technology.

Figure 1. The FPGA-DSP Combination. The architecture allows the FPGA to act as a reprogrammable preprocessor or coprocessor to a GPP.

The system is partitioned into a sensor head, signal conditioning and processing, communication, and battery. An obvious system configuration is to integrate the processing, communication, and battery into a base unit, and the user could then attach sensor heads as needed for the application. Such a system could even act as a gateway for or a manager of a distributed sensor network. The system is based on a commercially available DSP and FPGA in a standard PC-104 form factor (4 × 4" stackable cards). The system consists of either four or five cards: the DSP card, a power card, a data acquisition card, and one or two FPGA cards, depending on the application.

The FPGA module consists of an FPGA and five static RAM memories of 256 k × 36 bits each. Connections between the FPGA and the other boards allow the FPGA to control the data acquisition module and to interrupt the DSP. Additionally, the FPGA is connected to the DSP bus, making it possible to memory- map FPGA resources into the DSP address space.

The first CAµS application developed was an acoustic sensor system for ground-vehicle detection and bearing estimation (Figure 2). The sensor array is formed by a collection of omnidirectional microphones, each providing 360° field-of-view coverage. The sensors are placed on or near the ground in a geometric shape to conform the array. The microphone array consists of seven microphones, six in an 8-foot-diameter circle and one in the center. The signals received at each of the microphones are sampled at 1 kHz and the resulting data are multiplied by a windowing function. After a corner turn of the data, seven 1,024-point Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) are performed.