Frequency-Domain Sonar Processing in FPGAs and DSPs

Over the past year we have been exploring the use of FPGA-based custom computing machines for several sonar beamforming applications, including time-domain beamforming[1], frequency-domain beamforming, and matched field processing. In many ways sonar processing fits the criteria found in [2] for good FPGA applications -- the computations are data-parallel, they require little control, the data sets are large (infinite streams), and the raw sensor data is at most 12-bits. However, they have three characteristics which make them challenging. First, they involve intensive arithmetic (multiply-accumulates and trigonometric functions) on real and/or complex data. Second, they require significant memory support, far beyond that indicated in much previously published work. Third, the scale of the computation is large, requiring (possibly) hundreds of FPGAs and high-bandwidth interconnections to meet real-time constraints. Below we will address the first issue while issues two and three are h...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: FCCM
• Authors: Paul Graham, Brent E. Nelson
• Keywords: Beamforming, FCCM 1998, Frequency-domain Beamforming, Sonar Beamforming Applications, VLSI