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ee:hydrophones:start [2018/01/24 18:01] Ryan Summers |
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+ | The hydrophones have small piezo sensors that output very small voltages as sound hits them. To be able to read them, the hydrophone signals are filtered with a 1st order bandpass and then are gained by approximately 40-60dB. After the signals are amplified, they are then passed to the ADC for conversion. The ADC samples the hydrophone signals at 5MHz simultaneously and outputs the converted information over a custom, parallel interface. This interface is differential and utilizes DDR. In order to read the ADC values, the Zynq SoC (System on a Chip) is used. The Zynq has a dual core ARM processor embedded in FPGA fabric. A custom Verilog module was created for reading the parallel interface output by the ADC. The data is then sent over the AXI4-Stream protocol to allow it to be transferred into the processor's RAM through the HP-AXI interface (AXI is a common communication protocol for custom hardware modules written in Verilog). In order to accomodate the high data rate of the analog measurements, the AXI stream is connected to a DMA engine. At this point, the data has been successfully transferred into the computer and the cross correlation can be performed. The below sections delve into specifics of each of the different design areas. | ||
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+ | ==== Analog Design ==== | ||
+ | The analog signal goes through a five-stage amplification and filtering process. First, the signal is sent through two gain stages, each of which apply an adjustable gain to the signal. After the signal is gained into a reasonable voltage range, it is passed through a low-pass filter and then a high-pass filter to result in a bandpass filter of the signal. | ||
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+ | Once the signal has been filtered and gained, it is preprocessed for the ADC. In order to acquire more accurate measurements, the ADC requires signals to be differential. The analog signals are therefore put through a signle-ended to differential converter. Immediately before the signals enter the ADC, there is a low-pass anti-aliasing filtering. This filter guarantees Niquist criteria, which means that any frequencies detected in the sampled signal will not be aliases of higher frequencies. | ||
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+ | ==== FPGA Design ==== | ||
+ | The FPGA has a number of parts to it, but its ultimate goal is to take samples sent from the ADC and transfer them into the processor's memory. Immediately, the differential signals are passed to the FPGA IO buffers to convert them to single-ended. After the single-ended conversion, a custom Verilog block was written that takes in the ADC's clock and data signals to properly digitize the data. It then provides this data on an AXI-Stream interface. Because ADC reader block is driven off an external clock and the rest of the FPGA is clocked internally, care must be taken to cross the clock boundaries to prevent metastability. The Xilinx FIFO generator was used, as it generates an asynchronous read-write FIFO that can be used for synchronizing data with the internal FPGA clock. | ||
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+ | After synchronization, the AXI stream is connected to a Stream-To-Multi-Master Direct Memory Access (S2MM DMA) engine. The DMA engine is a software-programmable peripheral that will asynchronously write the ADC samples into the processor's RAM. | ||
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+ | There are a few other features implemented in the FPGA fabric, including the XSystemMonitor, which monitors the FPGA temperature. There is also a SPI module implemented that is used to program the ADC internal registers and verify its functionality. In Rev C of the HydroZynq, the manually adjustable potentiometers have been replaced with SPI-programmable potentiometers, which allows the analog gain of the signal to be controlled digitally. | ||
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+ | ==== Software Design ==== | ||
+ | The software design is straightforward, but the most complex of the other systems. Communication with other computers is implemented using UDP sockets provided by the lwIP (lightweight IP) library. When the CPU first boots, it loads the program off the SD card into memory. It then programs the FPGA bit stream and begins program execution after initializing most peripherals (e.g. Xilinx Ethernet). The application then initializes peripherals that were instantiated in the FPGA fabric (such as the ADC reader, the system monitor, and the SPI engine). It then configures the ADC chip and binds/connects to a variety of UDP ports for communication. | ||
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+ | The software first attempts to sync onto the ping. Because the ping happens every two seconds, once the first ping has been found, the system can consistently find every other ping afterwards. To acquire initial synchronization, the code samples the hydrophones for 2.2 seconds. It then scans this period for the earliest start of a ping (by performing a threshold detection). It then calculates at what exact time the ping started and schedules sampling to begin at the next future ping. | ||
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+ | After sync is acquired, the software samples for approximately 250ms during the ping period. It then locates the ping and truncates around the start to minimize the amount of data that needs to be cross-correlated. The software marks the timestamp of the ping and schedules a time that the next ping should occur at. Finally, the data is then cross-correlated to calculate the time of arrivals for each ping. The software then transmits a variety of debug information (including all sample data, correlation calculations, and time of arrival deltas) over ethernet. The cycle continuously repeats until a ping is not detected in the 250ms sample period. If this occurs, it will try to regain sync by continuously sampling fro 2.2 seconds. | ||
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+ | ===== Getting Started ===== | ||
+ | This section is designed to help a developer get started updating and programming the HydroZynq. | ||
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+ | === Code === | ||
+ | All software and firmware is available in [[https://github.com/PalouseRobosub/hydro-zynq|the GitHub repository]]. There are two primary directories: hardware and software. The hardware folder contains all the Verilog and TCL files for interracting with Vivado. TCL scripts have been generated to rebuild the block design in vivado, and a README.txt file in proj/ describes how to use them. Additionally, the IO constraints file is provided for the current hardware. | ||
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+ | The software folder contains all C source code used in programming the HydroZynq. An ELF file can be created by using the `mk` script supplied with the source file name. All files located in src/ will be compiled against the application specified to generate the binary. Finally, a BOOT.bin file (binary image that is used for booting off the SD cared) can be created through the utilization of the 'doit' script. This will automatically mount and copy over the BOOT.bin to the card for the HydroZynq. This script takes in the source file name of the main application as the first argument and the bit stream file as the second parameter. | ||
+ | The current firmware utilizes bit/adc_dma_revb.bit as the bitstream file. | ||
+ | === Programming === | ||
+ | === Communicating === | ||