Custom-Designed Signal Processing Application for RFSoC FPGA Platform

This paper presents a dual-layered, custom-designed RF signal processing application for the ZYNQ Ultrascale+ RFSoC ZU48DR platform. The low-level layer uses the FPGA’s programmable logic to implement ADC and FFT blocks, while the high-level layer uses the processing system to manage and configure on-board resources based on user specifications. The performance evaluation of the application focused on overall processing time for data display and recording, its noise level relative to analysis bandwidth and the precision of amplitude calibration. Specific metrics assessed included low-level HDL layer processing time, average time to read data from DMA, average data conversion time, and average time to plot data. These metrics were evaluated through rigorous tests, each involving 10 iterations of processing measures for 10,000 data frames. The evaluation results confirm the application’s reliability to operate in Spectrum Analyzer, Spectrogram, and Recording modes. Additionally, the paper explores a potential use case for wideband spectrum monitoring, highlighting the versatility of the developed application.