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An Analytical Review on FPGA Based Autonomous Flight Control System for

Small UAVs

Conference Paper · March 2016

DOI: 10.1109/ICEEOT.2016.7754907

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 International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, and Optimization Techniques (ICEEOT) - 2016

An Analytical Review on FPGA Based

Autonomous Flight Control System for Small
UAVs
Banwari Lal Sharma Narendra Khatri Dr. Abhishek Sharma
Deptt. Of ECE Deptt. Of MME Deptt. Of ECE
The LNMIIT, Jaipur, Rajasthan, The LNMIIT, Jaipur, Rajasthan, The LNMIIT, Jaipur, Rajasthan,
India India India
Banwari007@yahoo.com narkhatri@gmail.com abhisheksharma@lnmiit.ac.in

Abstract— Recently small UAVs are widely used in real
world applications. In the absence of the pilot, Flight control
system (FCS) is the brain of the any aircraft especially in the
UAVs. FCS can use various controllers such as conventional
PID Controller, combination of PID controller with Kalman
filter, fuzzy logic controller and FPGA /DSP based controller,
etc. This paper presents, brief explanation of four techniques
used in the development of the flight control system for small
UAVs namely, purpose of work, flow diagram, advantages and
disadvantages. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) /DSP
based small UAVs are better one, as it is a low power, fast
response, less volume and compatibility to applications. The aim
of this paper is to achieve a suitable characteristics compatible
with applications in the field of unmanned aviation.
Keywords—UAVs, FCS, FPGA, PID, LUT, RTOS, FCS20
I. INTRODUCTION
would also have a huge impact on the overall design, for
which code parallelization provides faster speed in FPGA and
other hardware components. Small UAV is constraint to less
volume and weight. As per current trend in modern UAV
development, FPGAs severed as the main architecture
platform in flight control system to provide quick and
efficient response with respect to proof of concept and time.
In fig. 1 Flight control system in the form of an
autopilot, having component such as sensor, Airframe,
controller, Navigation signal and servo etc. UAV flight path,
attitude, altitude, airspeed are measured and compared to
desired state in Automatic closed loop control system.
Sensors and actuators are important blocks in FCS.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) is widely used in

Air frame
real time applications (e.g. military, disaster [1] rescue
operations, civil operations, monitoring of Agricultural area,
monitoring of industrial area, photography, coastal
surveillance, combat zone surveillance, remote sensing, Attitude
ecological monitoring, natural resource estimation, command
Error
patrolling, transport of equipment etc.). In the absence of Controller
Sensor
pilot, three part of UAVs design such as Guidance,
Navigation and Control systems has to deal with all situations
Attitude
of taxing, take-off, landing [12,14], obstacle, tolerating Sensor
unpredicted flight conditions, tracking moving targets and
path following etc. According to size and function UAVs are
of three types small, medium and big UAVs.
Navigatio
Three constraints are required for small UAVs such nal signal Controller Servo
as small size, low weight and low power. Field
Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) provides parallel Control Surface
processing (all the bit at a time) and having large numbers of
gates on a single chip (essential for less volume). FPGA also Fig1: Flight Control System (FCS)
provide cost savings platform. The software of the systems
 International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, and Optimization Techniques (ICEEOT) - 2016
The sensors measure the air vehicle’s attitude,
angular rate, airspeed, heading, altitude and other functions
are measured and compared to desired states then error signal
is eliminated by control surface. Controller also important
block in FCS, The modification and combining of signals
from the different axes is accomplished in the controller. In
this paper four types of controllers are discussed as PID
controller, PID with KALMAN filter, fuzzy logic controllers
and FPGA /DSP based controller.
II. PID CONTROLLER
Small UAVs are controlled by PID controllers.
Nonlinear [3] model of UAVs are implemented by Aerosim
blockset in Mat lab Simulink. In fig. 2 the representation of
process flow of the small UAVs by PID controller is shown.
Longitudinal and lateral (linearization) planes are separated
in controller after identifying the potential problems [2].
Open loop nonlinear model
Identify undesired thing
Linearization of model
Run on PID controller
No
Desired
Results
Yes
Discretization Process
Implementation of PID Controller
Burn VHDL Code in FPGA Platform
Fig.2: Flow Chart of PID controller
Discretization provides a discrete approximation of
the continuous problem in comparison to continuous
optimization which are very time consuming. Discretization
provide optimum solution as well as substitution of time
consuming problem so output of PID controller are
discretized. After discretization the Simulink model is
deployed in FPGA platform [3]. Parallel PID controller is
faster but the performance is not comparable to cost paid.
Increasing critical path in PID controller reducing the
throughput of the controller. So critical paths of these
controllers are broken down using appealing pipelining and
re-timing techniques to improve throughput of the controller.
Improve throughput of parallel PID controller in small UAVs
with having faster performance using proper suitable
algorithm. PID controllers have slow response, overshoot,
long adjustment also have limitations in optimality and
robustness. PID Controllers are mostly used to control the
feedback mechanism, and are known for their robustness,
which is the main reason of its usefulness in small UAVs.
III. KALMAN AND PID CONTROLLER
Non Linear Model
Linear Model
PID Controller
KALMAN Filter
Desired
Results
No
Yes
VHDL Code for FPGA
Fig.3: Flow Diagram
 International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, and Optimization Techniques (ICEEOT) - 2016
Kalman and PID controller offers short transition,
good stability, anti-disturbance, good control and fulfills the
requirement of real-time and accurate control. Using
combination of Kalman and PID controller, UAV can avoid
collision accident and accurate control. In fig. 3 the output of
the PID controller is passed through Kalman filter. Kalman
filter is added after PID controller. This is the one change
from fig.1 to achieve better performance from previous one,
in this fig.3 all block work same as previous one. Accuracy
and Stability are two important factor to achieve a target in
small UAVs. Stability and accuracy can also be increased by
using different combination of Kalman and PID controller.
IV. UAV CONTROLLER BASED ON FUZZY LOGIC
In focus to UAV operation, Fuzzy [4,5] Logic offers
decision making skill, other task provide such diverse area as
fuzzy image processing, data mining, decision support,
trajectory generation and trajectory tracking. Decision
making include path planning, collision avoidance and
compulsory landings. To solve unexpected condition such as
weather condition, faults [10] in telecommunication links and
UAV subsystem failures etc. Fig.4 represents the fuzzy logic
mechanism [6,12].
Knowledge Base
Data base
Fuzzy rules
θp
θr
Fuzzy Defuz Plant
Fuzzi
infere zificat
ficati
+ processing of high level control algorithms. It is suitable for
on ncing ion
- many types of manned or unmanned system vehicles.
Feedback
Fig.4: Fuzzy Logic Mechanism
Fuzzification process: fuzzification is a first step in the fuzzy
interfacing where certain real data are converted to a fuzzy
amounts of membership functions.
Fuzzy Inferencing: the fuzzy rules are applied to decide the
output fuzzy variables.
Defuzzification: the fuzzy output variables are decoded into
desired values. MFLIPS using the Centre of Gravity
defuzzification method.
FPGA board come with multiple variants of logic
elements, user interface, IP generation tools and memory
options viz Artix7, Virtex-V and Cyclone II for architecture
development. In general, the UAV organization includes a
16-bit parallel and pipelined structure implemented using the
integrated development environment provided by vendor.
For code compilation, linking and debugging adaptation of
tool chains and API’s are necessary. Before implementing the
final design, it is mandatory to analysis the structural,
behavioral and physical model of the system carefully.
Fuzzification method, input variables, output variables, input
membership functions amount, output membership functions
amount, rules, inferencing method, defuzzification method
are the design parameter of controller in fuzzy logic
approach.
Max defuzzification and center-of-gravity can be
implemented with a tree of disjunctive elements having the
pipelined fuzzy processor. Crisp having input data
fuzzification method was implemented by Look-up Tables as
LUT is the fastest element on FPGA board. 16-bit crisp input
data is implemented by the address of the LUT to get the
degree of membership as membership function. Here, FPGA
as the processor in Fuzzy Logic Controller. Its on-board clock
frequency is 50 MHz with an inner DLL (delay locked loop)
unit, be altered to a 125 MHz system clock [14].
V. FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM USING FPGA\DSP
TECHNOLOGY
An integrated board having guidance, navigation
and control system referred to as the Flight control system 20
(FCS20). Two processors FPGA and DSP in the system
enables custom vehicle interfacing and fast sequential
Processor utilization is also used in image processing,
obstacle avoidance, data encryption and any feature requited
for advanced vehicle behavior.
In fig 5 the system architecture include FCS20
hardware and low level software based on neural network and
adaptive flight control system having real time operating
system (RTOS) [8], inter-processor communication,
navigation sensors and hardware integration. It is also
platform independent so run of this high level software [6].
This hardware optimize the performance to size ratio enabled
by Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensor and
embedded processing technologies.
FCS20, a single board having a microprocessor, a
large FPGA, memory, power board, sensor board, and
 International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, and Optimization Techniques (ICEEOT) - 2016
interface headers. A single size board, sized 5mm x 85mm,
minimum of two boards of this size, each board has four
mounting holes and four 2mm 40-pin headers. [13]. In this
process two boards are connected back to back. To desired
increased performance, we may be added application specific
board by stack method. Sensors board is connected with
FPGA, having three analog devices ADXR300 Rate Gyros,
absolute and differential pressure sensors and an uBlox GPS
OEM module.
SDRAM
GPS Serial
Soft ports
Accelero core
meter CPU
Servo
SENSOR Driver
FIFO
SDRAM FLASH
DSP
PROCESSOR
Fig.5: Hardware Configuration with DSP Processor
FCS20 DSP use the Micro/OS-11 real–time operating system
(RTOS), RTOS manages the data transfer from DSP to
FPGA. In this system all software and FPGA are stored in
non-volatile Flash memory. Program is executed in DSP,
DSP communicates with FPGA using a 32-bit parallel bus up
to 250 Mbps throughput
VI. CONCLUSION
PID controllers have slow response, overshoot, long
adjustment also has limitations in optimality and robustness.
PID Controllers are mostly used to control a system so it is
used in small UAVs. Accuracy and Stability are two
important factors to achieve a target in small UAVs. Stability
and accuracy can also be increased by using various
combinations of Kalman and PID controller. To solve
unexpected condition such as the weather condition, faults in
telecommunication links and UAV subsystem failures, etc.
The fuzzy logic controller is best suited. The current research
work will be extend to the more tolerant design with interface
specially focused to UAV inter and intra communication
techniques.
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