Remote reconfiguration of FPGA-based wireless sensor nodes for flexible Internet of Things☆. (May 2022) - Aziz, Syed Mahfuzul
Highlights: A technique to remotely reconfigure the entire FPGA in distributed sensor nodes. Uses small amount of reconfiguration logic, but no microcontroller or softcore processor. Fully wireless upload of new configuration bitstream to sensor node's flash memory. Remote reconfiguration and wireless upload operations do not drastically increase the sensor node's power consumption. Abstract: Recently, sensor nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) for high-speed, low-power processing and reconfigurability. Reconfigurability enables adaptation of functionality and performance to changing requirements. This paper presents an efficient architecture for full remote reconfiguration of FPGA-based wireless sensors. The novelty of the work includes the ability to wirelessly upload new configuration bitstreams to remote sensor nodes using a protocol developed to provide full remote access to the flash memory of the sensor nodes. Results show that the FPGA can be remotely reconfigured in 1.35 s using a bitstream stored in the flash memory. The proposed scheme uses negligible amount of FPGA logic and does not require a dedicated microcontroller or softcore processor. It can help develop truly flexible IoT, where the FPGAs on thousands of sensor nodes can be reprogrammed or new configuration bitstreams uploaded without requiring physical access to the nodes. Graphical abstract: Image, graphical abstract