Title: An FPGA-based reconfigurable data acquisition system for LIDAR signal detection

Authors: Héctor A. Lacomi; Tomás Di Fiore; Nicolás Urbano Pintos; Facundo S. Larosa

Addresses: División Radar Láser, Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa (CITEDEF), Av. Juan Bautista de la Salle 4397, Buenos Aires, Argentina ' División Radar Láser, Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa (CITEDEF), Av. Juan Bautista de la Salle 4397, Buenos Aires, Argentina ' División Radar Láser, Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa (CITEDEF), Av. Juan Bautista de la Salle 4397, Buenos Aires, Argentina ' Grupo de Aplicaciones en Sistemas Embebidos, Facultad Regional Haedo, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, París 532, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract: Commercial equipment to detect backscattering LIDAR signals is extremely expensive and is not flexible, making it cost prohibitive and unpractical in the long-term for ad hoc detection systems where it is necessary to perform continuous improvement in the field and/or depending on the application. In this paper the development, construction and evaluation of a data acquisition system based on field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to capture and process backscattering LIDAR signals is presented. The system performance was evaluated using laboratory generated signals which resulted in a similar performance compared with commercial equipment. Results obtained with the system were compared with several similar published implementations in order to contrast several aspects of the systems. This comparison is encouraging since it shows that this kind of scientific-grade system can be implemented using the described approach thus reaching lower costs and, at the same time, gaining in modularity, reusability, reconfigurability and flexibility.

Keywords: field programmable gate array; FPGA; detection system; LIDAR; backscatter.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2021.121085

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2021 Vol.14 No.6, pp.527 - 534

Received: 21 Nov 2020
Accepted: 29 Mar 2021
Published online: 24 Feb 2022 *

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