Choosing of FPGA For Design

[somulu]

Hello, i am Somulu, working on a project which will detects the signals like pressure, temperature, humidity and voice signals and processed using a FPGA. As i am new to FPGA so not getting how to process these real time signals using FPGA and which kind of FPGA i have to use. Can anyone tell me how to processed to write VHDL/ Verilog script to this.

 

[barry]

First of all, you'll either need an FPGA with a built-in Analog-to-Digital converter (like a Xilinx Kintex, for example), or you'll need an external device. Pressure and temperature and such are relatively slow signals, so you won't need a very fast ADC for those, but voice will require a faster device. You don't say anything about resolution: 8-bit? 24-Bit?

Before you even start thinking about writing code, you need to establish what your hardware is; that will dictate your code.

What do you mean by: "how to process" these signals? We can't tell you, you need to tell us what you want to do. Do you want to average them? Use them to control some other device?

 

[mtwieg]

Why would you want an FPGA to handle such slowly varying signals? A modern MCU is probably adequate, and will have a decent built-in ADC.

 

[somulu]

Sir actually i want to have a 8-bit ADC in FPGA which will process above mentioned signals and at the receiver voice signal received through speaker. and other signal values are displayed on LCD.I found on internet one FPGA named Spartan3E. Is this FPGA is useful for me.

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Thanks mtwieg, can you suggest me some MCU which will process temperature, Pressure, Humidity and Voice Signals.

 

[barry]

There is NO MCU that will process temp, press, etc. They process NUMBERS which are representative of those parameters. You will need a sensor to convert those parameters either to an analog voltage (which will then be converted by an analog-to-digital converter) or a digital signal (e.g., a serial data stream). You need to decide how you are going to measure your parameters, how fast you need to sample them, how accurately you need to sample them. You need to know how much processing you need to perform on the converted data and what you are going to do with it once you have.

Just about any small micro with a built in ADC will work for your temperature, etc. Some of them have built in LCD drive circuitry (Microchip PIC, e.g.) But it's not clear what you want to do with the voice signal. Just saying you want to "process" it is meaningless. Do you want to do speech recognition? Do you want to divide it by pi?

 

[somulu]

Sir, my project is to sense the signal signal like Temperature, Pressure, Humidity and Voice and at the receiver side i want to listen the transmitted voice signal and need to display Temperature, Pressure and humidity on LCD. for this i have selected Nexys3 Spartan6 FPGA and in additional i have PMOD( Peripherals) like ADC and DAC and temperature sensor. Actually my task is how to interface it using vhdl/ verilog. my clock signal frequency is 50MHz. So please help me anyone to interface these devices to FPGA.

 

[mtwieg]

Your question is like "what is the best hammer for loosening bolts." There's no good answer because an FPGA isn't really meant for handling such tasks, just like a hammer isn't meant to loosen bolts. An MCU is a much better solution to your problem.

Selecting FPGAs is generally done on what peripherals they have built in (or IP blocks), how many logic elements, speed, and your preference of development software. Since you probably won't need any fancy peripherals or IP blocks, and you won't need very high speed, the FPGA probably won't be a limiting factor. Just get something with a large number of logic gates, and choose manufacturer based on your software preference.