WHITE PAPER

Xilinx Zynq-based Development Platform for ADAS

Revision 1.3

2016-10-19
Igor Gorokhov
Level: Intermediate
©2016 Aldec, Inc.

Abstract
ADAS is an essential step between initial DA (Driver
Assistance) systems and fully autonomous cars capable
of driving without human guidance. Aldec provides an
FPGA-based development platform powered by Xilinx
Zynq-7000 SoC/FPGA heterogeneous technology, as well
as a set of ADAS-class reference designs for rapid
development of current and next-generation ADAS
solutions for the automotive market.

Meta Keywords ADAS, Zynq, FPGA, Computer Vision

Related Products Riviera-PRO, TySOM
Related Methodologies ASIC Prototyping, C Synthesis, Co-
Simulation
Related Markets Embedded, Automotive, IoT, UAV, High
Performance Computing
Aldec White Paper Zynq-based Development Platform for ADAS

Table of Contents
Zynq-based Development Platform for ADAS ............................................................................................... 1
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................... 2
Table of Figures.......................................................................................................................................... 2
Automotive Solutions with Aldec TySOM.................................................................................................. 3
TySOM ADAS Development Platform ........................................................................................................ 4
Blue Eagle Camera Reference Design ........................................................................................................ 5
ADAS Applications Area ............................................................................................................................. 6
Summary ................................................................................................................................................... 8
About Aldec, Inc. ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Table of Figures
Figure 1: Next-Gen Automotive Solutions (image source: www.blogs.intel.com)........................................ 3
Figure 2: Aldec TySOM ADAS Development Platform ................................................................................... 4
Figure 3: Blue Eagle Camera Link .................................................................................................................. 5
Figure 4: Plexiglass Car Model with ADAS Hardware Installed ..................................................................... 5
Figure 5: ADAS Sensor Range (image source: www.ti.com).......................................................................... 6
Figure 6: ADAS Workflow (image source: www.xilinx.com).......................................................................... 6

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Automotive Solutions with Aldec® TySOM™

With the rapid growth of emerging automotive markets, the technological landscape is transforming at
an unprecedented pace as cutting-edge companies continue to develop and provide innovative
automotive solutions. The advent of smarter and safer automotive solutions can collectively be
categorized into select trends:
 Electric/Green energy-driven vehicles
 Wireless/cloud connected vehicles, car-2-car communication
 Fully/partly autonomous vehicles
 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
As the automotive market grows, vendors are providing more comprehensive solutions, encompassing
multiple facets of the above trends into complete integrated products.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are digital electronic systems intended to aid drivers and
improve road safety. ADAS is designed to avoid accidents by alerting the driver about possible road
obstacles or collisions through the
implementation of safeguards and ultimately
potentially taking control over the vehicle.
Adaptive features may automate lighting
control, provide adaptive cruise control,
automate braking, incorporate GPS/traffic
warnings, keep the driver in the correct road
lane, and show objects in a vehicle’s blind
spots.
ADAS is the essential step between initial DA
(Driver Assistance) systems and fully
autonomous cars that can drive without
human intervention. Although ADAS hardware
systems may be successfully implemented
using ASIC, GPU, or FPGA technologies, one of
the best possible trade-offs between
processing performance, power consumption,
and scalability is the Xilinx Zynq All-
Programmable technology. CPU-based ADAS
solutions available today provide average
performance and strictly rely on specific
camera sensors and video data interfaces.
GPU-based solutions provide similar processing
performance to FPGAs, but with much higher
power consumption. FPGAs can meet both Figure 1: Next-Gen Automotive Solutions (image
performance and power requirements for source: www.blogs.intel.com)
ADAS. Designers of ADAS are increasingly
turning to FPGAs to integrate more functionality with the ability to process multiple algorithms with
real-time sensor data. Aldec provides an FPGA-based development platform based on TySOM series
boards powered by Zynq-7000 SoC/FPGA heterogeneous technology, as well as a set of ADAS-class
reference designs for rapid development of ADAS solutions for the automotive market.
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TySOM™ ADAS Development Platform

The TySOM-2-7Z045 Zynq-7000 based development boards along with ANSI/VITA57.1 compatible FMC-
ADAS extension cards (Figure 2) provide a hardware development platform for implementing ADAS-class
optical- and sensor-based solutions which meet strict demands from the automotive sector:
 real-time processing speed
 low-power consumption
The TySOM-2-7Z045 motherboard utilizes an SoC/FPGA module combining programmable logic with
ARM application processor. The specific Zynq chip used is the XC7Z045 which includes Xilinx Kintex FPGA
fabric and an 800 MHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU providing enough hardware resources for typical
ADAS designs. For growing designs requiring larger FPGAs, Aldec also delivers higher capacity versions of
the TySOM motherboard based on the XC7Z100 from Xilinx. TySOM motherboard key features include:
 Heterogeneous SoC (Xilinx Zynq-7000 All-Programmable SoC);
 2x FMC connectors - compatible with ANSI/VITA57.1 standard;
 Basic HID (Human Interface Devices) and network data transfer peripherals;
 Gigabit transceivers for high-speed serial data transfers.
Additional peripherals for ADAS solutions or other target applications can be connected using FMC cards.
Replacement cards can quickly bring new innovations into the target market. FMC-ADAS extension card
key features include:
 Universal ANSI/VITA57.1 standard;
 5x serial FPD-Link III compatible camera connectors;
 LIDAR and Ultrasonic sensors interface connectors;
 Sound alarm magnetic buzzer.

Figure 2: Aldec TySOM ADAS Development Platform

The automotive cameras used with current hardware platform are DC3K-1-LVD Blue Eagle cameras from
First Sensor, utilizing automotive-grade OV10635 HDR CMOS image sensor from Omnivision, FPD-Link III
compatible DS90UB913Q serializer (SER) module from Texas Instruments and 192 degrees wide-angle
lens in a highly thermal/mechanical protected housing with LVDS data interface.
One of the main competitive key differentiators of the Aldec TySOM-2-7Z045 ADAS development
platform among other Zynq-based ADAS platforms on the market is the top-level high-performance
Riviera-PRO Advanced Verification Platform delivered along with the hardware kit which can be used for
efficient functional verification of user implemented HDL code.

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Blue Eagle Camera Reference Design

The camera links are implemented using FPD-Link III compatible DS90UB914Q deserializer (DES)
counterparts available on FMC-ADAS extension card along with the Video Input Port (VIP) subsystems
implemented in the programmable logic part of the Zynq SoC FPGA. VIP subsystems are used to store
image pixel data into frame buffers allocated in main system DDR memory and are fully compatible with
the V4L2 (Video 4 Linux 2) Linux framework. The block-level view of the camera link is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Blue Eagle Camera Link

The whole hardware setup with automotive cameras mounted into a demo plexiglass car model is shown
in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Plexiglass Car Model with ADAS Hardware Installed

Aldec delivers full support for target Linux OS reference designs including all parts of an embedded Linux
setup with appropriate custom device drivers used together with hardware cameras and other sensors.
Moreover, additional support for automated Linux build systems like Petalinux and the Yocto Project is
also provided to speed up the overall target OS build process.
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Aldec White Paper Zynq-based Development Platform for ADAS

ADAS Applications Area

The typical ADAS solutions include various digital sensors such as RADAR, LIDAR and digital CMOS
cameras to capture, fuse and process data from the vehicle environment as shown in Figure 5. As the
image sensor resolution and performance requirements grow, more image data is captured for data
analysis and processing. The Zynq-7000 based ADAS development platform is uniquely equipped to
guarantee optimal application performance due to the inherent flexible nature of the FPGAs to adapt to
changing requirements. Aldec’s TySOM-2-7Z045 ADAS development platform allows you to increase the
quality of image sensor’s optical flow by using the FMC extension card with various desired camera
interfaces.

Figure 5: ADAS Sensor Range (image source: www.ti.com)

Once the images are captured and processed, the data can be used to generate necessary responses
depending on road conditions. An example of an entire ADAS application workflow is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: ADAS Workflow (image source: www.xilinx.com)

The FPGA part of TySOM-2-7Z045 Zynq chip is perfectly suited for tasks like sensor data grabbing, pixel-
level pre-processing and fusion. Image-analysis, feature-detection, and classification algorithms can then
be used at a higher level, to perform frame-based image processing partitioned between the ARM CPU

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and FPGA accelerators for massive parallelism. Finally, the high-performance ARM CPU or a real-time
FPGA soft processor can be used for decision-making tasks to improve the driving experience.
Popular ADAS functions include:
 Multi-camera 360 degrees surround-view;
 Rear-view camera parking assistance;
 Lane Departure Warning (LDW) – based on line detection algorithms, the driver is informed
about unintentional road lane departures;
 Pedestrian Detection (PD) – based on object detection algorithms, configurations allow for
detection of pedestrians in a front of a vehicle;
 Forward Collision Warning (FCW) – based on object detection algorithms, configurations allow
for detection of multiple vehicles in the immediate front driving path;
 Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) – based on object detection and classification algorithms to detect
and recognize traffic signs from the vehicle environment;
 Emergency Braking Control – based on LIDAR sensor measurements to avoid possible collisions
with obstacles;
 Blind Spot Detection (BSD) - uses ultrasonic or radar sensors on the side and rear of the car to
detect objects hiding in a driver’s blind spot;
 Driver Drowsiness Detection –face monitoring of the driver along with tracking cameras to
detect signs of driver drowsiness;
Each of those ADAS functions can be successfully mapped into the FPGA resources of the Zynq-7000
based TySOM ADAS development platform. An appropriate application partitioning between ARM
processing system (dual-core Cortex-A9 APU) and Xilinx programmable logic (Kintex FPGA) may be key
for an efficient algorithm implementation. Refer to Table 1 for the ADAS applications into hardware
platform mapping description.
Table 1: ADAS Applications Mapping in Zynq-7000 Based system

ADAS Application FPGA/SoC Function

Surround View Camera sensor interface, image analysis and synthesis algorithms, fish-
eye barrel lens distortion correction

Parking Assistance Ultrasonic, camera sensor and CAN bus interface

Lane Departure Warning Camera sensor interface and lane marking detection algorithm

Pedestrian Detector Camera sensor interface and pedestrian detection/marking algorithm

Forward Collision Warning Radar sensor interface and CAN bus interface

Traffic Sign Recognition Camera sensor interface and sign recognition algorithm

Emergency Braking Control LIDAR sensor interface and CAN bus interface

Blind Spot Detection Radar, camera sensor and CAN bus interfaces

Driver Drowsiness Detection Camera sensor interface and facial recognition/tracking algorithm

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Summary
Within the next few years, there will be more technological innovations for ADAS to address consumer
demand and regulatory requirements. Cost-effective FPGA-based development platforms provide the
suitable development environment for the rapidly evolving ADAS technology because FPGAs provide re-
programmability and flexibility.

The Aldec TySOM ADAS development platform powered by Xilinx Zynq-7000 technology fills the gap for
developing high performance and power optimized ADAS solutions for the automotive market. The key
features that distinguish it from other ADAS hardware platforms available include:
 Design reuse and scalability due to the FPGA fabric available within the Zynq chip;
 High performance ARM Processing System for the time-critical decision making tasks;
 Massive parallelism can be achieved for FPGA implemented object analysis/classification
algorithms;
 Best in class performance-per-watt ratio;
 New market innovations can be quickly utilized with 2 FMC expansion connectors available on
TySOM-2-7Z045 motherboard;
 Pre-built Linux OS based reference designs are available in the form of binaries and sources,
providing V4L2 compatible VIP camera subsystems which can be easily used with OpenCV or
similar open source computer vision libraries and frameworks for rapid camera-based
application development;
 Linux OS based solutions are easy to deploy with additional support for automated build tools
like Yocto Project, Petalinux etc;
 High-performance functional verification of user RTL with Riviera-PRO available out-of-the-box.

About Aldec, Inc.

Established in 1984, Aldec Inc. is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented
technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, Design Rule
Checking, IP Cores, DO-254 Functional Verification and Military/Aerospace solutions. Continuous
innovation, superior product quality and total commitment to customer service comprise the foundation
of Aldec’s corporate mission. For more information, visit www.aldec.com.

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