FPGA-Based Sonar Processing

This paper presents the application of time-delay sonar beamforming and discusses a multi-board FPGA system for performing several variations of this beamforming method in real-time for realistic sonar arrays. Additionally, we show that our proposed FPGA system has a six to twelve times performance advantage over an equivalent system created using currently available, high-performance DSPs designed for multiprocessing systems. This performance advantage is due to the simplicity of the core calculation, the limitations of the the DSP's address calculation hardware, and the ability to customize the I/O of the FPGA to the application.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: FPGA
• Authors: Paul Graham, Brent E. Nelson
• Keywords: FPGA, FPGA 1998, Performance Advantage, Realistic Sonar Arrays