Efficient firmware implementation of a multichannel scanning receiver for surveillance applications

The aim of the present work is to develop new approaches on surveillance receiver systems offering a wide input frequency range, instantaneous bandwidth and scanning speed at reduced costs, size and power consumption. In this paper, the architecture of a multichannel receiver and its interfaces is proposed. Detailed focus is put on the FPGA firmware and software architecture, that has been implemented in the receiver and in a remote-control software on a PC. One of the key design considerations is the segmentation of functions into FPGA firmware or software running on a processor included inside the FPGA. These design considerations are explained. Also a communication protocol is derived from this architecture. A ressource efficient implementation is presented, that integrates base band processing and the corresponding remote control logic of up to four receiver channels in a single FPGA providing an instantaneous bandwidth of up to 50 MHz.