MicroBlaze implementation of GPS/INS integrated system on Virtex-6 FPGA

Area of Science:

• Embedded Systems Engineering
• Navigation Systems
• Aerospace Electronics

Background:

• Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) integration is crucial for accurate positioning.
• Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer high performance for real-time embedded systems.
• Virtex-6 FPGAs provide a robust platform for complex computational tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate a loosely coupled GPS/INS integrated system using a MicroBlaze processor on a Virtex-6 FPGA.
• To analyze the system's performance concerning position accuracy, FPGA resource utilization, computation time, latency, and power consumption.

Main Methods:

• A loosely coupled GPS/INS architecture was designed and implemented.
• The MicroBlaze soft-core processor on the Virtex-6 FPGA handled inertial navigation and Kalman filter computations.
• Key performance metrics including position accuracy, FPGA resource usage (slices, DSP48, BRAM), computation time, latency, and power consumption were measured.

Main Results:

• The MicroBlaze-based GPS/INS system achieved real-time navigation solutions updated at 100 Hz.
• Detailed analysis of FPGA resource usage, computation time, latency, and power consumption was presented.
• The system's accuracy and efficiency were evaluated in the context of the Virtex-6 FPGA implementation.

Conclusions:

• The MicroBlaze implementation on Virtex-6 FPGA provides an effective platform for GPS/INS integration.
• The study offers valuable insights into the trade-offs between performance, resource utilization, and accuracy for FPGA-based navigation systems.