Towards a Scalable Hardware/Software Co-Design Platform for Real-time Pedestrian Tracking Based on a ZYNQ-7000 Device

Currently, most designers face a daunting task to research different design flows and learn the intricacies of specific software from various manufacturers in hardware/software co-design. An urgent need of creating a scalable hardware/software co-design platform has become a key strategic element for developing hardware/software integrated systems. In this paper, we propose a new design flow for building a scalable co-design platform on FPGA-based system-on-chip. We employ an integrated approach to implement a histogram oriented gradients (HOG) and a support vector machine (SVM) classification on a programmable device for pedestrian tracking. Not only was hardware resource analysis reported, but the precision and success rates of pedestrian tracking on nine open access image data sets are also analysed. Finally, our proposed design flow can be used for any real-time image processingrelated products on programmable ZYNQ-based embedded systems, which benefits from a reduced design time and provide a scalable solution for embedded image processing products

Implementing and Characterizing Real-time Broadband RFI Excision for the GMRT Wideband Backend

The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) is being upgraded to increase the receiver sensitivity. This makes the receiver more susceptible to man-made Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). To improve the receiver performance in presence of RFI, real-time RFI excision (filtering) is incorporated in the GMRT wideband backend (GWB). The RFI filtering system is implemented on FPGA and CPU-GPU platforms to detect and remove broadband and narrowband RFI. The RFI is detected using a threshold-based technique where the threshold is computed using Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) estimator. The filtering is carried out by replacing the RFI samples by either noise samples or constant value or threshold. This paper describes the status of the real-time broadband RFI excision system in the wideband receiver chain of the upgraded GMRT (uGMRT). The test methodology for carrying out various tests to demonstrate the performance of broadband RFI excision at the system level and on radio astronomical imaging experiments are also described.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder

A pathfinder version of CHIME (the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) is currently being commissioned at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, BC. The instrument is a hybrid cylindrical interferometer designed to measure the large scale neutral hydrogen power spectrum across the redshift range 0.8 to 2.5. The power spectrum will be used to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale across this poorly probed redshift range where dark energy becomes a significant contributor to the evolution of the Universe. The instrument revives the cylinder design in radio astronomy with a wide field survey as a primary goal. Modern low-noise amplifiers and digital processing remove the necessity for the analog beamforming that characterized previous designs. The Pathfinder consists of two cylinders 37\,m long by 20\,m wide oriented north-south for a total collecting area of 1,500 square meters. The cylinders are stationary with no moving parts, and form a transit instrument with an instantaneous field of view of $\sim$100\,degrees by 1-2\,degrees. Each CHIME Pathfinder cylinder has a feedline with 64 dual polarization feeds placed every $\sim$30\,cm which Nyquist sample the north-south sky over much of the frequency band. The signals from each dual-polarization feed are independently amplified, filtered to 400-800\,MHz, and directly sampled at 800\,MSps using 8 bits. The correlator is an FX design, where the Fourier transform channelization is performed in FPGAs, which are interfaced to a set of GPUs that compute the correlation matrix. The CHIME Pathfinder is a 1/10th scale prototype version of CHIME and is designed to detect the BAO feature and constrain the distance-redshift relation.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. submitted to Proc. SPIE, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation (2014

FPGA implementation of a 32x32 autocorrelator array for analysis of fast image series

With the evolving technology in CMOS integration, new classes of 2D-imaging detectors have recently become available. In particular, single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays allow detection of single photons at high acquisition rates (\geq 100 kfps), which is about two orders of magnitude higher than with currently available cameras. Here we demonstrate the use of a SPAD array for imaging fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (imFCS), a tool to create 2D maps of the dynamics of fluorescent molecules inside living cells. Time-dependent fluorescence fluctuations, due to fluorophores entering and leaving the observed pixels, are evaluated by means of autocorrelation analysis. The multi-{\tau} correlation algorithm is an appropriate choice, as it does not rely on the full data set to be held in memory. Thus, this algorithm can be efficiently implemented in custom logic. We describe a new implementation for massively parallel multi-{\tau} correlation hardware. Our current implementation can calculate 1024 correlation functions at a resolution of 10{\mu}s in real-time and therefore correlate real-time image streams from high speed single photon cameras with thousands of pixels.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

MOSAIC: A Scalable reconfigurable 2D array system for NDT

This paper documents the development of a scalable 2D array system, or Mosaic that can be targeted at a wide range of NDT applications by way of a reconfigurable tile that can be tessellated to form arrays of any size and shape. Close coupling permits utilization of excitation voltages as low as +/-3.3V with insertion loss of 48dB on reflection from an aluminum back wall at 73mm achieved using 2D arrays without decoding