Multiple curve presentation and zooming processor using Field Programmable Gate Arrays

This paper presents the design and implementation of a hardware graphical display custom processor for generating and manipulating plots based on a given set of time varying input signals. The paper primarily focuses on the design to generate plots of two sampled sine waves of 5 KHz and 10 KHz respectively, along with horizontal and vertical axes with proper scaling. This was achieved by designing the custom processor in Verilog HDL. A provision is made such that the plots can be zoomed horizontally and vertically, independent of each other. There are two levels of zooming provided for each signal plot, both horizontal and vertical zooming. A legend box at the top right corner of the screen was included to provide the scale details of both horizontal and vertical axes, at any level of zooming. The display of the signal plots and the different levels of zooming are controlled by switches of the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) DE2 development board. The proposed design gives a compromise solution for flexibility and reconfigurability at the hardware level.