Applied Radar Physics

Norwegian ARP produce some of the most cutting-edge radar equipment for surveillance of harbors and ship traffic. Their solution was based on a set of modules that were announced "end-of-life". Therefore, ARP wanted a solution that was better prepared for the future.

The Solution

The solution came in the form of Sundance Modules. We needed to apply a hardware-based programming solution to provide fast processing of large quantities of data. The data came from the conversion of analogue radar images. Sundance Multiprocessor Technologies has off-the-shelf modules that were perfect for this project, and the work
was completed in just two months.

By constructing the FPGA design in Diamond from Scottish 3L, ARP's algorithms could be isolated completely from the hardware aspect of the project. Diamond provided a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) for FPGA.

This is a great example of reducing development time by using a modulebased system useful for smaller production quantities.

Axcon’s Role

Our role was the construction of the hardware component of the solution. This consisted of an FPGA module and an A/D converter that transforms the analogue radar images into digital data for processing by the algorithms. We also developed a device driver for Linux. This driver can move more than 100 megabytes per second using less than 1% of the CPU load.

Applied Radar Physics' Advantage

ARP were able to focus on the algorithms and efficiency; they allocated the hardware portion of the project as well as the Linux device driver to Axcon. They were able to focus on their strengths andachieve an excellent result in record time.