RF Signal Generation for MRI System Using PS-PL Communication in FPGA Over Ethernet

Abstract

FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is an open-source framework consisting of a small hardware core and a host-software library. It provides a platform for extensible communications, allowing the specialized chips in the FPGAs to program and perform very specific functions in hardware. Implementation of a function in software can be done in the exact manner as in case of an FPGA and thus can be executed in hardware. This paper presents the designing and simulation of RF Signal Generation for MRI systemsusing the PS to PL communication over FPGA platform with the help of Ethernet communication protocol. The working of embedded processor inside FPGA is such that it can receive data via Ethernet in the form of packets. Further processing of the data is carried out on the received Ethernet packets from which actual data is extracted, processed and finally transmitted to the other required subsystems, as in this case to RF Transmit coils. The concept explained in this paper enables the host PC to transmit data to Xilinx-based FPGA board via Ethernet using a standard synchronous inter-networking protocol (TCP/IP). The implementation platform is an evaluation board which has an Arm processor on FPGA. Using the VIVADO tool, the processor is configured inside the Zynq SOC. SDK (Software Development Kit) helps in configuring the software part of the processor. The link between the PC and the evaluation board is well established using the Ethernet interface and the output is given to the AXI GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) pins. The output from GPIO is given to subsequent system like DUC (Digital-Up Converter) and from DUC it is further passed on to RF DAC.