FPGA-based acquisition of sensor data

Programmable devices such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) present an attractive option for hardware implementations of acquisition interfaces for sensor-data processing systems. They can provide a high throughput and resolution but at a fraction of the power requirements of a DSP. By pushing routine tasks such as sensor regulation, data collection and formatting, and noise correction to be handled by an FPGA, the processor or DSP is freed to handle computational intensive operations while achieving an over all reduction in the power consumption of the system. In addition, the configurable nature of FPGAs offers design flexibility and future scalability. In this work, the design and implementation of a platform for data acquisition, conditioning and processing is discussed. The unit is built using an Altera FPGA development board.