Tlelo-Cuautle E., de Jesús Rangel-Magdaleno J., de la Fraga L.G. Engineering Applications of FPGAs. Chaotic Systems, Artificial Neural Networks, Random Number Generators, and Secure Communication Systems

Springer, 2016. — 230 p.Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) were invented in 1984 by Ross Freeman. Basically, it is a semiconductor consisting of programmable logic blocks that can be used to reproduce simple functions up to a complex system on a chip (SoC). The main advantages of the FPGAs are: they can be reprogrammed, have low development and acquisition costs, and their application is a good option if the product is not in high numbers. That way, FPGAs are gaining the attention of researches for the development of applications in a wide variety of fields, for example, medicine, communications, signal processing, avionics, space, finance, military, electronics, and other areas that exploit their flexibility and capability of being reprogrammed/configured.
Configurability for engineering applications makes FPGA very crucial in initial stages for any embedded project. Some analog circuits and any digital circuit can be implemented using FPGA, so the possibilities are endless. However, applications found on recent articles and books did not detail the realizations from the model to the physical synthesis. That way, this book details engineering applications of FPGAs from mathematical models descriptions to VHDL programming issues and hardware implementation of applications involving chaos theory.
The reader can find insights on FPGA-based implementations for chaos generators, artificial neural networks (ANNs), random number generators (RNGs), and master–slave synchronization of chaotic oscillators to implement a secure communication system for image transmission. The plus of this book is focused on providing VHDL programming guidelines and issues, along with co-simulation examples with Active-HDL and Simulink. In addition, we list some challenges on applying different kinds of numerical methods, problems on optimizing chaotic systems, selection of an ANN topology, its training, improvements on designing activation functions, data supply using serial communication with a computer, generation of random number generators from chaos theory, realization of chaotic secure communication systems, and other open problems for future research.Introduction to Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
VHDL
MatLAB-Simulink Co-Simulation
Chaos Generators
Artificial Neural Networks for Time Series Prediction
Random Number Generators
Secure Communication System
Challenges in Engineering Applications