Building a FPGA-based Electrical Circuit

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The student will conduct background research on hardware programming, and will build an all-electrical setup for precision measurement of an electro-mechanical resonator. The student will be provided with relevant hardware and software, including FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) boards, their corresponding IDEs (integrated development environment) and other pieces of electronics. The student will work closely with a graduate student and will be in charge of programming, building and testing the electrical circuit.

LABORATORY MENTOR
Monan Ma

RESEARCH GOALS
The goal of this research project is to make significant contributions to building an ultrasensitive, FPGA-based electrical measurement system for detecting high-frequency signals from nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). This will be a compact, digital, and low-cost measurement system that improves upon the currently used analog setup, which is bulkier and more susceptible to external noise sources.

LEARNING GOALS
– Learn the basics of hardware programming and its key differences compared to software programming, understand the concept of parallel computing
– Learn the workflow of how to use Verilog/VHDL to program an FPGA board
– Learn about the concept of a balanced electrical measurement circuit, and divide it into individually programmable components
– Learn troubleshooting techniques, such as timing issues and hazards
– Learn how to build a digital electrical circuit

2023 TIMELINE
Week 1-2: Practice programming FPGA for simple logic operations, literature review, learn about electrical circuits under supervision of a graduate student
Week 3-4: Program individual electrical components on an FPGA board
Week 5-6: Program individual electrical components on an FPGA board (cont’d)
Week 7-8: Test and troubleshoot individual components
Week 9-10: Build a working FPGA-based circuit by assembling individual components and test its functionality, poster preparation