Multiprotocol transceiving, Formatting and Temperature monitoring FPGA based unit

The FCT (Formatting, Communications and Temperatures) electronic unit developed at INTA´s radar laboratory as part of the X-Band synthetic aperture radar project (RBX SAR, see ref) is capable of receiving up to four channels of radar pulses and echoes at 1.5 Gbps line rates, with the use of aurora protocol on top of the Virtex 5 gigabit transceivers, format these data and send them to the system´s storage unit (UAD) with a parallel protocol. In addition, the FCT communicates with other units through a VME bus. It also handles the memory map of the X-band transmitting unit, as well as translates the VME parallel bus communications to this unit to a 1.5 Gbps serial aurora protocol through optical fiber. Besides, the FCT monitors and stores temperature data gathered from different units of the radar system through a serial SMBus protocol, and manages access to these data through VME bus. Finally, with a second Virtex 5, it formats, decimates and filters the received radar echoes and sends them to the real time processing unit through a serial sFPDP protocol (1.0625 Gbaud).