Low-Cost and Optimized Two Layers Embedded Board Based on ATmega32L Microcontroller and Spartan-3 FPGA

Abstract

Microcontrollers and FPGAs both are widely used in digital system design. Microcontroller-based instruments are becoming increasingly widespread. This paper presents design and implementation of a new low- cost and minimum embedded board based on ATMEGA32L AVR microcontroller and Spartan-3 (XCS400-4PQG208C) FPGA in two layers with mount elements on top and button of board. Using of AVR microcontroller in proposed board it adds many features include Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), 32 Kbytes flash memory, 2 Kbytes SRAM, 1024 bytes EEPROM memory. The design goal was to implement as many as possible low- cost and minimum size of the board, also to receive and process input signals in a short time period as real time. The board features are; mount elements in two side of the board for minimization of proposed board and also place decoupling capacitors (by pass) for the FPGA in bottom layer of board strictly below this IC because they should be placed as close as possible to the power supply pins FPGA, use GND polygon layer in total top layer and microcomputer ground for FPGA in bottom layer, use two RS-232 serial port, one VGA connector, PS/2 serial port, and SPI serial port on FPGA, use MT48LC16M16A SDRAM-256MB(4*4MB*16), and XCF02S configuration PROM. Size of the proposed embedded board is 10cm*15cm thus this board was optimized of aspect cost, performance, power, weight, and size.