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| DSP-Based Control |
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Advances in digital signal processing driven largely by telecommunications applications have produced very high performance components with direct relevance to real-time and embedded control of vibration, motion and noise. CSA develops real-time control systems using digital signal processors (DSPs) and other microprocessors. Building on experience gained in active noise and vibration control systems, CSA combines hardware, software and development tools to create embedded systems to meet customer needs. These systems have operated for tens of thousands of hours in applications in a variety of environments. CSA also makes use of in-house DSP-based controllers in performing advanced research for commercial and government customers. | |
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It's an exciting time to be developing control systems using DSPs. The hardware capability is increasing rapidly and the cost per multiplication, addition, or floating point operation is declining rapidly. CSA works with customers and a small set of DSP board vendors to develop the right hardware for a particular application given cost, size and power constraints. The majority of our work uses DSPs from the industry leader, Texas Instruments. Recent efforts have used the fixed-point and floating-point processors in TI's 'C6000 family. CSA has also developed a standard DSP board family for rapid development of embedded control systems. |
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The same DSP hardware platform can support a vast number of different applications. It is the software that distinguishes one application from another. Often, software must be tailored to the application of interest to support physical system requirements and customer requirements for data visibility. CSA evaluates control system performance as the software is developed to insure that requirements are met and repeatability and fail safety are addressed. For a given platform, the software can exploit the hardware architecture to increase throughput and efficiency. During the development process, Our DSP software is developed using tools such as Texas Instruments' Code Composer Studio. We also make use of Matlab as necessary. In certain applications, including those involving non-DSP embedded processors, CSA uses real-time operating systems such as VxWorks. Experience in the integration of various processor boards and daughterboards allows us to offer software integration services for customer-purchased hardware. |
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When a development is completed, the software is often burned in as firmware to support standalone embedded control. Many applications require a real-time control system to operate independently from a host computer. This means that the controller hardware is not just a board in a PC, and that the physical system is not controlled from a user interface. It's a standalone system. CSA develops such systems with the capability to operate independently while controlling the physical process of interest. When necessary, an embedded system can be designed to send and receive data to/from other computers. This allows in-situ reprogramming of firmware and the transmission of status and even high speed data to the user. CSA's new standard embedded controller product also allows customer modification of firmware. |
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Most of the DSP related work done by CSA involves some type of custom development. We work with customers in specifying a hardware achitecture and in defining an interface between the DSP controller and the customer's own computers or other control systems. Advanced algorithms and interfaces with physical transducers and associated electronics can be developed at CSA prior to integration with customer hardware. Finally, if a DSP solution is overkill for a particular application, we offer low-cost options that use 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers. | |
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