MCU-FPGA Anemometer
Designing PCB Module for Space-Rated Anemometer
When: July 2022 Where: VN Instruments/NASA AMES
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The largest project I have ever undertaken. MCU, FPGA, DAC, ADC, SDRAM...it felt like this board had every IC I'd ever learned about (and more). But the opportunity to work with and learn from ACTUAL NASA engineers is one I will always be grateful for.
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The Context
VN Instruments designs capacitive ultrasonic transducers for use in extraterrestrial environments. To interface with and drive these transducers, it is necessary to build digital (MCUs, DAC, etc.) and analog systems (op-amps, etc.). A large part of the work at VN involves designing, building and testing PCBs for this purpose.
The Project
The next stage of our project with NASA AMES had to meet different design criteria:
Design digital system with radiation-tolerant parts (MCUs, ADCs, FPGA, etc.)
Decrease power consumption while increasing processing speeds of MCU
Upgrade firmware to FreeRTOS (better support and more general than TI-RTOS)
What was my role?
Hardware Development
Worked with NASA AMES engineers to source rad-tolerant parts
Designed schematics for board using reference evaluation kits for MCU, FPGA, DAC, ADC, SDRAM, etc.
Performed multi-layer routing, taking into account current flow
Measured current consumption of individual ICs on board
Firmware Upgrade
Tested and improved efficiency of VN's algorithms on new MCU
Coded SPI, UART and other communication modules (in C and Verilog) to stream data from MCU to FPGA.
Converted event detection algorithm from TI-RTOS to FreeRTOS
