The Role of FPGAs in the Push to Modern and Ubiquitous Arrays

Abstract

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are finding greater use in commercial and military arrays for radar, communications, and other applications, thanks to recent advances in FPGA processing throughput, reduced power consumption, and faster input/output (I/O) interfaces with reduced pin counts. This paper describes how the latest in commercially available FPGAs address new forms of digital array architectures. A radar array design example illustrates how to select an FPGA for a given performance requirement.