Run-Time Debugging and Monitoring of FPGA Circuits Using Embedded Microprocessor

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) provide a fast and flexible hardware for embedded control systems and signal processing. Despite this, tracing and monitoring of internal signals is awkward. FPGA vendors provide their own tools to solve the debugging problems but they are not sufficient for real time monitoring. Instead, these signal tracing tools are good especially for tracing timing issues. This paper presents a method to monitor the internal signals of FPGA circuits by using an embedded microprocessor. The efficiency of this method is demonstrated with an FPGA-based active magnetic bearing control hardware.