Modelling and implementation of fuzzy systems based on VHDL Original Research Article

The number of electronic applications using fuzzy logic-based solutions has increased considerably in the last few years. Concurrently, new CAD tools that explore different implementation technologies for this type of systems have been developed. In this paper we illustrate a fuzzy logic system design strategy based on a high level description. Employing this high level description, the knowledge base is translated to a format in appearance close to the natural language with the particularity that it uses a hardware description language (VHDL) directly synthesizable on an FPGA circuit. In addition, we analyze different approaches for FPGA implementations of fuzzy systems in order to characterize them in terms of area and speed. Among them, the use of specific processing architectures implemented on FPGAs presents as main advantages a good “cost-performance” ratio and an acceptably short development time. The different synthesis facilities provided by the Xfuzzy design environment for the implementation of programmable fuzzy systems, which take advantage of the available resources in the current FPGA families, are also analyzed in this paper.