Development of a scalable generic platform for adaptive optics real time control

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable, FPGA-based adaptive optics control platform that leverages parallel processing to improve real-time wavefront correction, accommodating various sensing techniques and data protocols.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, FPGA-centric platform for adaptive optics control capable of handling multiple wavefront sensing methods and data transmission protocols.

Findings

Preliminary simulation results demonstrate the platform's viability.

Design of a fully scalable slope computer is proposed.

The system outperforms traditional CPU/GPU solutions in specific AO tasks.

Abstract

The main objective of the present project is to explore the viability of an adaptive optics control system based exclusively on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), making strong use of their parallel processing capability. In an Adaptive Optics (AO) system, the generation of the Deformable Mirror (DM) control voltages from the Wavefront Sensor (WFS) measurements is usually through the multiplication of the wavefront slopes with a predetermined reconstructor matrix. The ability to access several hundred hard multipliers and memories concurrently in an FPGA allows performance far beyond that of a modern CPU or GPU for tasks with a well defined structure such as Adaptive Optics control. The target of the current project is to generate a signal for a real time wavefront correction, from the signals coming from a Wavefront Sensor, wherein the system would be flexible to accommodate all the current Wavefront Sensing techniques and also the different methods which are used for wavefront compensation. The system should also accommodate for different data transmission protocols (like Ethernet, USB, IEEE 1394 etc.) for transmitting data to and from the FPGA device, thus providing a more flexible platform for Adaptive Optics control. Preliminary simulation results for the formulation of the platform, and a design of a fully scalable slope computer is presented.