What is the status of FPGA aerospace applications?
FPGA has been widely used in aerospace and space fields at home and abroad, especially commercial satellites. According to statistics, FPGAs are used in 60 projects in deep space exploration, scientific and commercial satellites at home and abroad, and FPGAs are also used in many military satellite projects.
1. Aerospace application of Acte FPGA
Actel’s radiation-resistant and radiation-resistant FPGAs have continued to be used in NASA and ESA’s Mars exploration missions since the success of the Mars Pathfinder (Mars Pathfinder) and subsequent missions of Valor and Opportunity in 1997. Actel's radiation-resistant and anti-radiation devices are used in the control computer of the Mars rover to perform the navigation function of the 6-month flight from the earth to Mars. Actel devices are used in the camera and wireless communication equipment of the Mars Explorer Rover (ExplorerRover). In ESA's Mars Express orbiting satellite, the solid-state recorder uses more than 20 Actel FPGA devices. Actel's FPGA devices have been used in the German Aerospace Region (DLR) Dual Spectrum Infrared Detection (BIRD) satellite. BIRD is the world's first satellite using infrared sensor technology to detect and study high-temperature events on the earth, such as forest fires, volcanic activity, oil wells and coal seam burning. More than 20 high-reliability FPGAs are used in multiple key functions such as satellite payload data processing, memory management, interface and control, co-processing, and infrared camera sensor control.
2. Aerospace applications of Xilinx FPGA
Compared with ACTEL, Xilinx's products used in the aerospace and space fields are relatively late. However, its powerful, high-performance, reconfigurable civilian plastic packaging products are transitioning to aerospace-grade products, and the ability to resist space radiation is gradually improved. It has become a commonly used FPGA product in the design of space electronic products and will be more and more widely used.
Xilinx's Virtex radiation-tolerant FPGA was used in the Australian military-civilian mixed communications satellite Optus CL launched in 2003. In the satellite's UHF payload, XilinxVirtex FPGA (XQVB300) was used to implement the signal processing algorithm for earth data, and was provided by Xilinx IP core.
Xilinx's ruggedized FPGA XQR4062XL was used in the high-performance computing payload of the Australian scientific satellite Fedsat (joint satellite for studying the magnetosphere) launched in 2002. HPC-1 is the first case of using FPGA to implement configurable computing technology RCT in the standard operation of a spaceborne computer system. The RHC-II currently under development will use Xilinx FPGA to realize on-board data processing.
In addition, the XQR4O36XL product is used in GRACE (NASA)'s sensitive sensor.
Xilinx FPGA products have been successfully applied in Mars rover Discovery and Spirit. Two pieces of aerospace FPGA VirtexTM FPGA XQVR100O are used in the wheel motor control, robotic arm control and other instruments of the Mars rover. Four pieces of radiation-resistant 4000 series FPGA XQR4062XL are used to control the key ignition equipment of the Mars lander to ensure that the lander is in compliance with regulations. The program descended and landed successfully. Europe’s first comet orbiter and lander ROSETTA has a total of 45 FPGAs, all of which use ACTEL RT14I00A, which assumes important functions such as control, data management, and power management, and no FPGA must be powered off during flight.
The Virtex-5QVFPGA recently released by Xilinx has very high radiation resistance, TID resistance is more than 700 kraD, SEU (Sin-gle Event Upset, single event upset) latch (Latch Up) resistance is more than 100 MeV•cM2/Mg, mainly For remote sensing processing, image processing and navigator applications on satellites and spacecraft. Therefore, the FPGA-based system configuration does not need to increase redundancy for radiation measures, which can reduce the time and cost required for system development. Its scale has also reached 130,000 logic units, integrated high-speed transceivers with a maximum speed of 3.125 Gbit/s, and enhanced DSP functions, making it the industry's highest level of FPGAs used in the aerospace field.
If you want to know more, our website has product specifications for FPGA aerospace applications, you can go to ALLICDATA ELECTRONICS LIMITED to get more information