Development of a smart wireless sensing unit using off - the - shelf FPGA hardware and programming products

In this study, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are investigated as a practical solution to the challenge of designing an optimal platform for implementing algorithms in a wireless sensing unit for structural health monitoring. Inherent advantages, such as tremendous processing power, coupled with reconfigurable and flexible architecture render FPGAs a prime candidate for the processing core in an optimal wireless sensor unit, especially when handling Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and system identification algorithms. This paper presents an effort to create a proof-of-concept unit, wherein an off-the-shelf FPGA development board, available at a price comparable to a microprocessor development board, was adopted. Data processing functions, including windowing, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and peak detection, were implemented in the FPGA using a Matlab Simulink-based high-level abstraction tool rather than hardware descriptive language. Simulations and laboratory tests were carried out to validate the design.