A Parallel Area Efficient Kolmogorov Phase Screen Generator Suitable for FPGA Implementation

Abstract

In infrared (IR) scene simulation, modelling of wave- front distortions over finite aperture is carried out to simulate the phenomenon of scintillating IR sources resulting from atmospheric turbulence. Computation time of algorithms used to model this effect has always been an important issue and for this reason there have been many previous attempts to accelerate these algorithms. In this paper, we expand on our previous work [12] to accelerate phase screen generation using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We were able to develop a more area time efficient phase screen generator by two means. Firstly the key computationally intensive steps of the algorithm were identified and optimized. Secondly a parallel version of the algorithm for implementation on a FPGA was developed. Our best hardware implementation manages a throughput of 13,780 32bit, 201x201 outputs (called phase screen points) per second, which is over 8x the original algorithm's implementation on a Pentium 4(2.8GHz) dual core processor.