RF signal processing in UAVs using FPGAs and exploration of high-speed ADC/DAC ICs for phased array applications

Abstract

This thesis presents a method to acquire and process RF signals, in real-time, for various applications like spectrum sensing, communication purposes, electronic warfare and many more. An RF signal acquisition system starts with the analog front-end constituting the LNA, Mixers, Band-pass filters etc. In the backend, we have an ADC that converts the continuous RF signal to digital form so that they can be processed using a digital devices like CPUs (Raspberry Pi, Intel, AMD etc.) & FPGAs (ZCU104, PYNQ Z1, ZCU102, VCU118). The project first introduces a full signal acquisition system with a basic analog front-end and the Red Pitaya STEM Lab 125-10 as the signal acquisition device and the acquired samples are sent to a Raspberry Pi 4 (On-Board Computer) for software-based signal processing applications. A small PCB based signal generator has been used as the local oscillator for the system. The Red Pitaya has a sampling rate of 125 MSPS, with a 50 MHz LPF at the RF input. The system consisting of the Red Pitaya, Raspberry Pi, PCB Signal Generator along with a RF amplifier and a mixer will be used for remote data acquisition applications like UAVs, Drones etc.