Research Of FPGA Remote Dynamic Reconfiguration System Based On GPRS

With the extensive application of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), FPGA is well-known for its flexible configuration and excellent digital processing performance. The technology of FPGA dynamic reconfiguration has also become a research hot spot in the field of computer system. It can realize the time sharing of FPGA logical resource. It can also curtail the IC scale of large scale digital system and reduce the power dissipation effectively. But when the digital system working in severe environment confronts some environmental change the previous designed function may not satisfy the environment any more. In order to update the system design remotely, one remote dynamic reconfiguration method is proposed in this paper.After analyzing the principle of dynamic reconfiguration and FPGA configuration structure, a modified design based on IP cores is proposed in this paper combining with EAPR design method provided by Xilinx Company. Then one remote dynamic reconfiguration method based on GPRS data wireless transmission is proposed.One TCP server is built on the upper computer in the control centre by using Lab VIEW to transmit FPGA configuration data in TCP transmission mode to the GPRS module working in the field. Micro Control Unit reads the configuration data from buffer of GPRS module and then saves it to the configuration memory. FPGA reads the data via SystemACE controller to complete the dynamic reconfiguration. CompactFlash card is used as the configuration memory in this paper. Multiplexers are used in the circuit design to allow MCU and SystemACE controller time share the CF card. With the expanding of FPGA integration scale, the configuration files become larger and larger. So the configuration data is compressed using modified run length encoding, thus the time spending in data transmission and saving can be saved and the storage memory can be saved.The experiment system is built using XUPV2P development board designed by Xilinx Company, STC89C54 MCU, MC52i and CF card. A dynamic reconfiguration is built based on the system to verify the theory proposed in this paper. The process from data transmission to reconfiguration is closely monitored. The system is stable in operation.