Mil Tech Trends: Controlling the UAV overhead (Part 1 of 2)


enable real-time manipulation to optimize gathered data for transmission to the ground station. The ACCI system encrypts the preprocessed data and transmits the secured data to the ground control station. The laptops used in the demo decrypt the data and present it to the user.


The partial reconfiguration capability enabled additional savings by allowing ACCI to utilize the smallest, rugged- ized, defense-grade Virtex-5 family member that integrates a PowerPC. The XQ5VFX70T device chosen includes 11,200 Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs) and a single PowerPC core. Without par- tial reconfiguration, the design requires a larger FPGA that would cost more and use more power. As an example, this can mean a 5x savings in just static quiescent power consumption between the smaller product and the next larger product in the Virtex-5Q family.


ACCI and Xilinx are working on a new version of the UAV demonstration system that will leverage the defense- grade Virtex-6 family and further com- pound the SWaP-C benefits. Virtex-6 FPGAs consume 50 percent less power than Virtex-5 FPGAs with a similar number of CFBs. Moreover, the Virtex-6 family is manufactured in a 45 nm pro- cess technology, versus a 65 nm process for the Virtex-5 family. Rather than requiring an FPGA with an integrated PowerPC hard core, the new version of the UAV system will yield further savings through the use of a soft core MicroBlaze processor.


Jim Anderson is a Senior Staff Defense Application and Architecture Engineer at Xilinx. Prior to joining Xilinx, Jim was an engineer at Philips


Semiconductors and Sandia National Laboratories. He holds a BSEE from the University of New Mexico. Contact him at Jim.Anderson@xilinx.com. The author thanks Jonathan Ellis, CEO of Advanced Communications Concepts, Inc. of Austin, TX for his assistance with this article.


Xilinx


408-559-7778 www.xilinx.com


MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS March/April 2011 33


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