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An FPGA Coprocessor for Real-Time Bathymetric Synthetic Aperture Sonar

The following is a thesis for a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. It presents the design of an FPGA coprocessor for real-time bathymetric synthetic aperture sonar. Bathymetry is the process of finding the height of the seafloor; a problem that requires the computation of a large number of short-length correlations and runs slowly on a conventional microprocessor architecture. It is desirable to generate the seafloor bathymetry in real time for use as a visual aid during data gathering, thus the development of a customised coprocessor is required. The design presented utilises the system-on-chip (SoC) approach to FPGA programming, with a microprocessor, memory, communication cores and custom hardware all contained within a single chip. The merits of SoC design are examined and the details of this implementation are presented. The coprocessor communicates with a host computer over a USB link, receiving raw data as it is collected and sending processed data back to be displayed on-screen. The system was successful as a proof-of-concept, capable of processing an eighth of the area imaged by the sonar in real-time. The results for a simulated scene are presented and the performance of the current system examined with a view to improving its capabilities. While further work is required to implement a complete solution to the problem, the work carried out thus far has provided a solid base for future research.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/1232
Date January 2007
CreatorsMulligan, David John
PublisherUniversity of Canterbury. Electrical and Computer Engineering
Source SetsUniversity of Canterbury
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic thesis or dissertation, Text
RightsCopyright David John Mulligan, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml
RelationNZCU

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