Surveillance UAV example

Battlefield surveillance UAVs such as the Altair Predator B variant (Figure 2)

are good examples of where packaged PMC-based FPGAs like the TS-MPEG-4

could be used for video capture and compression. This class of UAV usually flies

at low to medium altitude over a battlefield or other area of particular interest

and carries a number of video and, possibly, high-resolution single-shot cameras

for a more detailed view of individual objects. The UAV will be controlled from a

ground station that receives images from various cameras and are then

displayed for analysis by the ground crew.  The images may then also be

relayed further up the command chain to build a complete tactical picture of the

battlefield. The downlink from the UAV to the ground does not have the

bandwidth to transmit all the video streams directly from the cameras in real

time, driving the need for compression. 

The mission computer for such a UAV is likely to be implemented using COTS

VMEbus or CompactPCI modules. Because of the limited space, weight, and

power budgets available in a UAV, 3U CompactPCI would again be an ideal

format choice for the mission computer.  FPGA-based PMC modules for video

compression could be mounted on a host SBC or could occupy 3U slots using

carrier cards. Video streams direct from the cameras in RS-170 format would be

converted to MPEG-4 by the FPGAs, then encapsulated and downlinked by the

mission computer for any of the ground-based operations required.

The FPGA with its unique and flexible architecture looks set to replace many of

today's dedicated DSP solutions where its parallelism and aggregate throughput

make possible big reductions in real estate and cost. Equally, the cost of time-

to-deployment is becoming a critical factor for both the government and system

integrator, and FPGA-based solutions often provide benefits as well. The

availability of bundled, application-oriented COTS solutions, even though they

may require minor customization for a particular end-use, promise to bring new

FPGA-based DSP systems online faster and at lower cost