Customer Case Study 4

"We will be using either a Xilinx or Altera FPGA. Both have Arctan functions.
What information can you provide that will describe the advantage of your IP
in this application. Any hard data would be helpful"

- Customer based in Snowmass Village, COLORADO

This customer had requirement to take accurate phase measurements of a pair of cartesian coordinates. For this particular project, both the accuracy and speed of conversion were of primary importance. Standard CORDIC Arctan implementations were too large and too slow, so we developed a very accurate, low latency 4-Quadrant Arctan Core to do the job!

Further work involved the development of a small DSP pipeline to scale and unwrap the phase measurements. The resulting phase was passed through our SINCOS core to generate quadrature outputs for subsequent processing.

The design was adapted for use on an Altera® Cyclone II FPGA running at 120MHz. Originally targeted for a TMS320® DSP processor, the FPGA-based pipeline more that doubled the sensor conversion rate while still maintaining the desired level of accuracy.

Conclusion

Our customer had a very tight requirement in terms latency, speed and accuracy for this small DSP pipeline. After an initial enquiry into our Arctan core, we went on to develop a more complete design solution for them. Working with them closely throughout the project, the result was a design that easily doubled the bandwidth of a traditional DSP-processor approach. What's more, we helped them choose a suitable low-cost FPGA device that fitted well within their budget.