Design of FPGA Remote Upgrade System Based on QuickBoot Technology

In the Traffic Collision Avoidance System and Air Traffic Controller, The application of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is becoming increasingly widespread. The traditional upgrade method of FPGA programs relies on the USB-JTAG interface and local development environment, resulting in low transmission efficiency and poor stability; In special environments, some devices do not have the conditions to open the cover and use the USB-JTAG interface to complete the program upgrade. In response to the above issues, this paper implements an remote upgrade of FPGA programs based on QuickBoot technology. Using a designed FPGA software upgrade platform, the program to be upgraded is transmitted to the FPGA through the Ethernet port reserved by the device. The FPGA completes the area address division of flash memory, and through the SPI interface with the configured flash, it completes the read, write, and erase operations of different areas, ultimately completing the update of programs in flash memory. Maintenance personnel only need one Ethernet cable and one Personal-Computer to complete the remote upgrade of the program. Through experiments, it has been shown that this method still has the ability to remote upgrade even after restarting the device due to abnormal interruptions during the upgrade process, which can significantly improve the reliability, usability, and flexibility of the system [1].