Proceedings Article | 28 May 2009
KEYWORDS: Field programmable gate arrays, Sensors, Telecommunications, Sensor networks, System on a chip, Control systems, Microcontrollers, Computer programming, Network on a chip, Analog electronics
Most reconfigurable systems rely on FPGA technology. Among these ones, those which permit dynamic and partial
reconfiguration, offer added benefits in flexibility, in-field device upgrade, improved design and manufacturing time, and
even, in some cases, power consumption reductions. However, dynamic reconfiguration is a complex task, and the real
benefits of its use in real applications have been often questioned.
This paper presents an overview of the partial reconfiguration technique application, along with four original
applications. The main goal of these applications is to test several architectures with different flexibility and, to search
for the partial reconfiguration "killing application", that is, the application that better demonstrates the benefits of today
reconfigurable systems based on commercial FPGAs. Therefore, the presented applications are rather a proof of concept,
than fully operative and closed systems. First, a brief introduction to the partial reconfigurable systems application topic
has been included. After that, the descriptions of the created reconfigurable systems are presented: first, an on-chip
communications emulation framework, second, an on chip debugging system, third, a wireless sensor network
reconfigurable node and finally, a remote reconfigurable client-server device. Each application is described in a separate
section of the paper along with some test and results. General conclusions are included at the end of the paper.
