Design of the control system hardware based on xscale and FPGA for microminiature aerial vehicles

Aimed at microminiature aerial vehicles (MAV) design, a hardware design solution of control system based on FPGA cooperating with Xscale is presented. The micro processor based on Xscale architecture is the main processing kernel of the flight control system, and is used to calculate the navigation and control algorithm. FPGA is the peripheral chip, used to process most of the input signals. Embedded Linux OS is selected as the software platform for flight control system. Bootloader is transplanted, that functions in establishing software run-time environment to boot the Linux kernel. Embedded Linux streamlined and FPGA driving program developed. Considering the need of signal processing, the A/D convertion circuit is designed, which is designed with hardware design language. Results of tests showed that the hardware platform of micro digital control system had the characteristics of compact size, low weight and cost, which made it more applicable to the MAV.