surveillance uav example
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Surveillance UAV example
Battlefield surveillance UAVs such as the Altair Predator B variant (Figure 2)
are good examples of where packaged PMC-based FPGAs like the TS-MPEG-4
could be used for video capture and compression. This class of UAV usually flies
at low to medium altitude over a battlefield or other area of particular interest
and carries a number of video and, possibly, high-resolution single-shot cameras
for a more detailed view of individual objects. The UAV will be controlled from a
ground station that receives images from various cameras and are then
displayed for analysis by the ground crew. The images may then also be
relayed further up the command chain to build a complete tactical picture of the
battlefield. The downlink from the UAV to the ground does not have the
bandwidth to transmit all the video streams directly from the cameras in real
time, driving the need for compression.
The mission computer for such a UAV is likely to be implemented using COTS
VMEbus or CompactPCI modules. Because of the limited space, weight, and
power budgets available in a UAV, 3U CompactPCI would again be an ideal
format choice for the mission computer. FPGA-based PMC modules for video
compression could be mounted on a host SBC or could occupy 3U slots using
carrier cards. Video streams direct from the cameras in RS-170 format would be
converted to MPEG-4 by the FPGAs, then encapsulated and downlinked by the
mission computer for any of the ground-based operations required.
The FPGA with its unique and flexible architecture looks set to replace many of
today's dedicated DSP solutions where its parallelism and aggregate throughput
make possible big reductions in real estate and cost. Equally, the cost of time-
to-deployment is becoming a critical factor for both the government and system
integrator, and FPGA-based solutions often provide benefits as well. The
availability of bundled, application-oriented COTS solutions, even though they
may require minor customization for a particular end-use, promise to bring new
FPGA-based DSP systems online faster and at lower cost