Design and Implementation of an Efficient and Modernised Technique of a Car Automation using Spartan-3 FPGA

Abstract

This paper deals with the integration of various functions involved in the automation of car in to a single chip so that the cost and complexity of the system can be reduced. This paper also includes the concept of Low Power Optimization technique. In an existing CAN control system, the number of nodes required to control various parameters of an automation process are more and it may increase the number of controllers. Also separate modules are to be programmed for different nodes and the large numbers of interfaces are required for the CAN system. These requirements of the CAN control system makes the design and implementation of an Automation, a complex one. The objective of this paper Enumerates a new automation system in which FPGA is employed to integrate all the functions into a single chip. The FPGA chip acts as master controller, receiving the inputs from the various sensors and sending the proper command signals to particular system in time for controlling the specific action of the car. The paper mainly focuses on the following parameters such as Engine Speed, Engine temperature, Mirror adjustment, Wiper control, Anti lock brake system, RSB-Rotational Sensing Block, and Obstacle detection. Significance stands with the Anti lock brake system and the Obstacle detection. The Methodology involves in this paper is , the whole automation of the vehicle is coded in VHDL, simulated using Modelsim and synthesized using Xilinx ISE environment and downloaded in Spartan-3 FPGA kit. The Xilinx FPGA is similar to CPLD, with smaller functional blocks but in large number spread out evenly across the entire chip along with programmable interconnects. The downloading tools are used to program the FPGA. These tools connect to JTAG port or serial port of the Spartan board on one end and to pc parallel port on the other end. The Spartan-3 board consists of 1,728 logic cells with 124 I/O lines. These requirements are suitable for the implementation of vehicle automation. Each of the seven modules represents various parameters such as temperature of the engine, speed of vehicle, mirror adjustment, wiper control, anti lock braking system, rotational sensing block and obstacle detection are separately synthesized using Xilinx tool and downloaded to the FPGA board. The functionality of the modules is tested on the board using toggle switches and output is monitored with output LEDs.
In this paper the vehicle automation is done using FPGA to reduce the complexity and cost than the existing CAN mechanism. Here seven main control parameters are taken into account and these parameters are controlled successfully with the concept of low power optimization. In future more parameters (nearly 40) can be controlled to improve the performance of the car automation system. Also the system can be optimized for speed, area and power using optimization techniques.