Design and Testing of a Wireless Communication Enabled FPGA Development Board: A Comprehensive Education and Application Platform from IoT to Circuit Design

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit (IC) that can be reprogrammed or configured by the customer or designer after production for rapid prototyping and post-process development. In this study, a cost-effective FPGA development board is designed to create basic engineering education applications and implement them in real-time. The FPGA development board utilizes an Altera Cyclone IV E-series chip and includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules to provide a wider range of applications. This integration simplifies the use of wireless communication in various projects and applications for researchers and engineers. To verify the accuracy of the proposed board, simulations of selected digital designs and Bluetooth applications were first performed in VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language) using Intel® Quartus® Prime Lite Edition software. Then, experiments were performed on the board following the pin assignment configurations. It was observed that the developed applications worked successfully on the FPGA development board. As a result, this board, equipped with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules, offers a fast and cost-effective solution for users in various fields such as mobile, robotics, smart home systems, and remote monitoring and control devices

Keywords

• FPGA
• Embedded System Design
• Digital Design
• VHDL
• IoT

References

1. [1] S. Azimi and S. Abba Ali, "FPGA programming with VHDL: A laboratory for the students in the Switching Theory and Digital Design course," Bachelor's Thesis in Computer Science and Engineering, 2023.
2. [2] İ. Savran, "Donanım Tanımlama Dili VHDL ve FPGA Uygulamaları," İstanbul: PapatyaBilim, 2017.
3. [3] S. Denholm, "Improving low latency applications for reconfigurable devices," PhD Thesis, Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, 2023.
4. [4] B. Grady and J. H. Anderson, "Synthesizable heterogeneous FPGA fabrics," in 2018 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (FPT), 2018: IEEE, pp. 222-229.
5. [5] N. Pillutla and S. Kumar, " FPGA Implementation of Multi-RT Protocol for Avionics Simulation" IEEE International Systems Conference (SysCon) pp. 1-4, 2023.
6. [6] S. Ricci, S. Caputo, and L. Mucchi, "FPGA-Based Pulse Compressor for Ultra Low Latency Visible Light Communications," Electronics, vol. 12, no. 2, p. 364, 2023.
7. [7] M. A. A. Al-Dulaimi, H. A. Wahhab, and A. A. Amer, "Design and Implementation of Communication Digital FIR Filter for Audio Signals on the FPGA Platform," Journal of Communications, vol. 18, no. 2, 2023
8. [8] S. S. Antora, Y. K. Chang, T. Nguyen-Quang, and B. Heung, "Development and Assessment of a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-Based Image Processing (FIP) System for Agricultural Field Monitoring Applications," AgriEngineering, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 886-904, 2023.

9. [9] P. Chen, Y. Chen, and T. Shi, "Real-time simulation and research of motor controller based on FPGA," in Third International Conference on Mechanical Design and Simulation (MDS 2023), 2023, vol. 12639: SPIE, pp. 483-489.
10. [10] K. Ghosh, K. Hatua, and A. Mitra, "Design and Development of DSP-FPGA based Control Board for Electric Vehicle (EV) Applications," in 2022 Second International Conference on Power, Control and Computing Technologies (ICPC2T), 2022: IEEE, pp. 1-6.
11. [11] L. A. Ajao, J. Agajo, B. U. Umar, T. T. Agboade, and M. A. Adegboye, "Modeling and implementation of smart home and self-control window using FPGA and Petri net," in 2020 IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica, 2020: IEEE, pp. 1-5.
12. [12] M. Kumar, A. Jayalaxmi, and W. Malemnganbi, "Design and Implementation of Secured Car Parking System using FPGA," International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 180-188, 2022.
13. [13] M. H. B. Saif, N. U. Sadad, and M. N. I. Mondal, "FPGA Implementation of Educational RISC-V Processor Suitable for Embedded Applications," in 2023 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Engineering (ECCE), 2023: IEEE, pp. 1-5.
14. [14] G. Surekha, G. Madesh, M. P. Kumar, and H. Sriramoju, "Design and Implementation of Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU)," in 2023 2nd International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Computing (ICAAIC), 2023: IEEE, pp. 1530-1536.
15. [15] A. K. Panigrahi, S. Patra, M. Agrawal, and S. Satapathy, "Design and Implementation of a high speed 4bit ALU using BASYS3 FPGA Board," in 2019 Innovations in Power and Advanced Computing Technologies (i-PACT), 2019, vol. 1: IEEE, pp. 1-6.
16. [16] N. Sağlam and F. Kaçar, "Design and Simulation of 64 Bit FPGA Based Arithmetic Logic Unit," Electrica, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 158-165, 2019.
17. [17] B.Karakaya, F.Çulcu and M.Türk, “Digitally Programmable Multi-Scroll Chaos Generator On FPGA” European Journal of Technique (EJT), vol.10, no.2, pp.207-216,2020.
18. [18] A. Keskin and İ. Koyuncu, "Yeni Bir FPGA Geliştirme Kartı Tasarımı ve Uygulaması.", Bilgisayar Bilimleri ve Teknolojileri Dergisi, vol.3, no.2, pp.46-55, 2022.
19. [19] J. Zhao, Z. Wang, and J. Chen, "Design of Pocket Development Board Based on FPGA," in IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2018, vol. 382, no. 4: IOP Publishing, p. 042030.
20. [20] L. Gao, "Development of FPGA experiment and development board," in World Automation Congress 2012, 2012: IEEE, pp. 1-4.
21. [21] https://www.fpgadeveloper.com/list-of-fpga-dev-boards-with-wifi-bluetooth/ (accessed 30.11.2023).