Improving FPGA Based Impedance Spectroscopy Measurement Equipment by Means of HLS Described Neural Networks to Apply Edge AI

[EN] The artificial intelligence (AI) application in instruments such as impedance spectroscopy highlights the difficulty to choose an electronic technology that correctly solves the basic performance problems, adaptation to the context, flexibility, precision, autonomy, and speed of design. Present work demonstrates that FPGAs, in conjunction with an optimized high-level synthesis (HLS), allow us to have an efficient connection between the signals sensed by the instrument and the artificial neural network-based AI computing block that will analyze them. State-of-the-art comparisons and experimental results also demonstrate that our designed and developed architectures offer the best compromise between performance, efficiency, and system costs in terms of artificial neural networks implementation. In the present work, computational efficiency above 21 Mps/DSP and power efficiency below 1.24 mW/Mps are achieved. It is important to remark that these results are more relevant because the system can be implemented on a low-cost FPGA.This work was supported in part by the Spanish MCIU under Project PID2020-116816RB-I00 (MCIU/FEDER) and in part by GVA under Project INNEST/2020/248.Fe, J.; Gadea Gironés, R.; Monzó Ferrer, JM.; Tébar Ruiz, Á.; Colom Palero, RJ. (2022). Improving FPGA Based Impedance Spectroscopy Measurement Equipment by Means of HLS Described Neural Networks to Apply Edge AI. Electronics. 11(13):1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11132064114111

A considerable improvement of the traditional FPGA-based digital design methodology by using an Arduino sensor board

[EN] The traditional way to learn and teach Digital Systems has been changing over the last decades by the use of Hardware Description Languages (HDL) and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) evaluation boards. The use of an Arduino development kit with different sensors connected to the FPGA upsizes the students experience in the area of Digital Systems. A temperature and humidity ambience sensor combined with an ultrasound sensor to measure distance can effectively be used by students to implement its first serial data converter that takes the sensor data and shows the obtained values from the Arduino in the seven segment display of the FPGA kit. After three years of experience in the new grade courses at the UPV Telecommunication School the number of students enjoying this new way to learn the subject Fundamentals of Digital Electronics (FSD) has dramatically risen up with an increase of a 20% in the number of students that pass the subject and that select the electronic branch of telecommunication studies in the future semesters.Martínez Peiró, MA.; Larrea Torres, MÁ.; Lidon Roger, J.; Jiménez Jiménez, Y.; Torres Curado, R.; Tébar Ruiz, Á. (2020). A considerable improvement of the traditional FPGA-based digital design methodology by using an Arduino sensor board. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 81-89. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2019.2019.10091OCS818