Downloading the Project Source
This project creates a polyphase channelizer capable of migrating 4 GHz of incoming RF bandwidth to 4096, 1 MHz channels with 2/1 oversampling. The design involves multiple blocks made using Vitis HLS (2020.1+) and one block exported from System Generator (2019.2+). The remaining blocks can be found in the Xilinx blockset in Vivado Design Suite (2021.2+).
The first versions of this project were made to run on the Xilinx ZCU111. The OPFB block was first verified using synthetic data fed through the core using a DMA engine transferring individual packets of data. That project is tagged as 512 MHz OPFB Initial Release (ZCU111) and is associated with this paper. The original ZCU111 project was updated to demonstrate the OPFB operating in streaming mode and uses the integrated RF Data converter to generate and sample the data in hardware loopback. This ZCU111 Project is tagged as 512 MHz Streaming OPFB (ZCU111) and is also preserved on the zcu111_legacy branch. Refer to the legacy branch for instructions specific to the earlier ZCU111-based projects.
The current verison of the design is built to run on the Xilinx RFSoC4x2 in RF Data Converter loopback. Data is generated in a Jupyter Notebook hosted on the embedded CPU before being written to device URAM as a waveform look-up-table. The two DACs output the waveform which is then sampled by two RFSoC ADCs (all running at 4.096 GSPS). The data freely streams through the OPFB channelizer. At the user's request, the output channels are captured to the PL DDR4 and visualized in a Jupyter Notebook using the PYNQ framework. This design and much of the supporting software is part of a broader effort in Ben Mazin's group at UCSB to develop instruments featuing arrays of cryogenic detectors for astronomy imaging applications. Check out our lab website to learn more about the research group. To learn more about the FPGA-based readout project, check out our latest publication on arXiv. The full project is continually under development but the current state is available on Github here.
If you're wondering what an OPFB is, how it works, or why you should use it, I suggest looking through the materials in the learning directory. Polyphase_Explanation.pdf is a summary note I made to document key takeaways and figures and includes an explanation of the differences between Polyphase Filter Banks (PFBs) and Oversampled Polyphase Filter Banks (OPFBs). This note is largly based off of work done by Fred Harris. OPFB_Exploration.ipynb is an interactive Jupyter Notebook capable of arbitrary oversampling, channel-size, etc. and includes cells demonstrating how the filter is designed and characterized. For more information on how to efficiently implement an OPFB on an FPGA, please read the paper.
This project is built using Vivado Design Suite 2022.1 + Vitis HLS 2022.1 + System Generator 2019.2.
The bd directory contains block design .tcl script which can be sourced from within Vivado to rebuild the top level overlay design from which the bit stream is generated.
The bit directoy contains the .bit and .hwh files used to program the FPGA.
The filter directory contains the .coe files used to program the Xilinx filters.
The ip directory contains repositories for all the custom ip modules used in the firmware including the source files and exported IP.
The py directory contains the Jupyter Notebook to run the project on the board.
You will need a RFSoC4x2 with a suitable image. It's possible to use the stock PYNQ 3.0.1 image; however, users will have to modify the memory reservation to make the DDR4 accessible to pynq.allocate. This can be done at run-time and there are a few examples of this such as the Kria-PYNQ repo (see /dts), the RFSoC-MTS repo, and a thread discussion. For simplicity, we make our custom RFSoC4x2 image available here and recommend downloading this image and flashing it to your SD card. See the PYNQ Docs for more detailed setup information.
The Jupyter Notebok relies on functions specified in the MKIDGen3 repository. To install it on the board, first be sure the board is running PYNQ and is connected to the internet then run
cd ~
mkdir ~/src
git clone https://github.com/mazinlab/mkidgen3.git ~/src/
cd ~/src/mkidgen3
git checkout develop
sudo pip3 install -e ~/src/mkidgen3
Note this project was tested with MKIDGen3 commit hash b3e3f67.
The last thing needed to run the project on the board are the pre-compiled FPGA Files. Move bit/opfb_streaming.hwh,bit/opfb_streaming.bit, and the Jupyter Notebook py/opfb_demo.ipynb to the same location on the board.
Navigate to the board's Jupyter Notebook server. Run the opfb_demo.ipynb notebook.
This project makes use of git submodules to track individual IP block repositories. To clone the repository and initialize and update the submodules including nested submodules run the command:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/MazinLab/RFSoC_OPFB.git
If you already cloned the repo you can accomplish the same thing by running:
git submodule update --init --recursive
You should see individual folders in ip/ populated with their source files, build scripts, etc. For more information on git submodules check out the docs.
The top-level Makefile will rebuild the project and run synthesis and implementation in Vivado batch mode. The script requires you to have Vivado Design Suite 2022.1 with the proper paths set. To be sure your Vivado paths are configred correcly, run
source <XILINX_PATH>/Vivado/2022.1/settings64.sh
Presuming the programs are installed and configured appropriatly, you can build the project with
cd /<path_to_RFSoC_OPFB>
make
To just build the block design, first be sure you have the RFSoC4x2 board files
cd /<path_to_RFSoC_OPFB>
make board_files
Then run
cd /<path_to_RFSoC_OPFB>
make vivado_prj
If you want to build the bitstream from the command line after these steps, run
cd /<path_to_RFSoC_OPFB>
make bitstream
Note 08/23/24: Default branch had been moved from master to main. To fix your local repo, run the following:
- Checkout master branch
git checkout master
- Rename local master branch to main
git branch -m master main
- Set newly named local main to track remote main
git branch -u origin/main
- Pull latest main updates
git pull