Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Digital Communications for Ground penetrating Radar
Murrough Birmingham
Abstract:
A prototype stepped-frequency ground-penetrating radar (GPR) system is currently being developed at the Cooperative Research Centre for Sensor Signal and Information Processing. This thesis, as a continuation of last year’s project, presents a communications subsystem that is to be integrated into the system
Initially, a review of material which is relevant to the background of the system and its existing hardware is presented. Requirements for the system are discussed and specifications for the communications system are stated.
The fundamental layout of the system has already been established.
The system comprises of three circuit boards: a main controlling board and two antenna subsystem boards. Switches and LEDs are used as data inputs and outputs. Altera PLDs are used for the implementation of required logic systems.
An encoding scheme developed for the purposes of this thesis is implemented using a finite state machine approach. This scheme is used in the communication of control data at high clock speeds. Factors affecting the implementation of this scheme are considered. The control data is transferred from the main control board to the subsystem boards via wire connections. These connections will eventually consist of fibre-optic links.
The hardware and software implementation stages are discussed.
Finally, the results from the implemented communication system are reviewed and it is concluded that these results are successful. It is recommended that the present system be implemented using faster PLDs.
Complete thesis:
thesis.pdf
Additional material:
images
Conference paper
About the Author
Dept of Computer Science and Electrical
Engineering / Murrough
last mod 14/10/98