Extensible and reconfigurable software radar signal processing system and method

Abstract

The invention discloses an extensible and reconfigurable software radar signal processing system and method. The extensible and reconfigurable software radar signal processing system comprises a component layer, a scheduling layer and an interface layer, wherein the component layer comprises a high-speed radar data communication module based on an optical fiber and a PCIe interface, a real-time data storage module, a network communication module and a basic component module; the scheduling layer comprises a parameter management module, a computing resource scheduling module and a signal processing flow scheduling module; the interface layer comprises a system configuration interface, a radar parameter configuration interface and a standardized signal processing module. The invention aims to establish a universal processing platform, realize software and hardware decoupling and complete real-time software radar signal processing through standardized interfaces and protocols, and has the characteristics of universality for a radar front end, high flexibility for a user and customizability for the user.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention belongs to the field of radar signal processing, and particularly relates to an extensible and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system and method. Background Art

[0002] The following problems exist in the development of traditional radars: First, the R & D efficiency of traditional radar systems is low, and they cannot quickly respond to changing requirements. This is mainly because they rely on proprietary hardware and software with low openness, and each radar system is unique due to different people and things, resulting in a long development cycle, high cost, and difficult subsequent upgrade and maintenance of radar systems. Second, the current technology update and iteration speed is fast. The characteristics of low generality and high coupling of traditional radars make them unable to quickly adapt to new types of hardware with multi-channels, high sampling rates, and high computing performance, and they do not have compatibility and scalability.

[0003] Software-based radar is a new type of radar technology characterized by standardization, modularization, and digitization. Based on an open architecture and with the concept of meeting actual needs, it can achieve system expansion, update, and upgrade through software-based development models. Different from traditional radar technology based on proprietary hardware and for specific functions, software-based radar technology has the technical characteristics of definable requirements, reconfigurable hardware, and reconfigurable software. This open architecture can decouple software and hardware, improve the reusability of each component, facilitate the expansion and upgrade of underlying hardware, and quickly reconstruct upper-layer applications, greatly reducing the cost and cycle of radar system development.

[0004] Currently, existing software-based radar signal processing systems are mostly designed for specific radar front-ends or specific processors (such as based on CPU or based on GPU, etc.), resulting in a significant reduction in the portability of the system and being unable to quickly adapt to new radar front-ends and processor components. At the same time, existing software-based radar signal processing systems support user-defined algorithms less, lack a unified custom interface, and are difficult to respond to specific task requirements. Summary of the Invention

[0005] The object of the present invention is to provide an extensible and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system and method. By decoupling the radar front-end hardware and signal processing software and implementing front-end and back-end communication through a standard interface protocol, the radar front-end hardware can be quickly upgraded and expanded. At the same time, a custom algorithm interface is opened to provide computing functions based on different processor hardwares, and custom algorithms can be quickly designed and developed.

[0006] The technical solution for achieving the object of the present invention is: An extensible and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system includes a component layer, a scheduling layer, and an interface layer;

[0007] The component layer includes a radar data communication module, a real-time data storage module, a network communication module, and a basic component module, which are used to implement the underlying hardware drive and provide a standard interface for the upper-layer applications;

[0008] The scheduling layer includes a parameter management module, a computing resource scheduling module, and a signal processing flow scheduling module, which are used to manage and update system and radar parameters, and implement coarse-grained thread scheduling and signal processing flow scheduling;

[0009] The interface layer includes a system configuration interface, a radar parameter configuration interface, and a standardized signal processing module, which are used to provide a standard configuration interface for users, implement basic signal processing algorithms, and at the same time provide an algorithm customization interface for users.

[0010] Furthermore, the radar data communication module includes:

[0011] A synchronization module, which is used to synchronize timing signals such as data readable signals, data length signals, and command parameter request signals between the radar front end and the system;

[0012] A parameter distribution module, which is used to distribute radar waveform, frequency, and beam working parameters to the radar front end;

[0013] A data reception module, which is used to read radar echo data in a ping-pong manner from the PCIe interface and write the radar front-end working parameters;

[0014] A data segmentation module, which is used to segment coherent processing data blocks from the received radar echo data stream according to the working parameters for subsequent processing.

[0015] Furthermore, the real-time data storage module includes:

[0016] A radar raw data storage sub-module, which is used to save radar raw data to a disk array in a specified format;

[0017] A processing process data storage sub-module, which is used to store intermediate data generated during signal processing to a disk in a specified format.

[0018] Furthermore, the network communication module includes:

[0019] A processing result upload interface, which is used to package the target information output by radar processing into a standard communication frame format and send it to the radar display and control interface through the network;

[0020] A system status upload interface, which is used to package the radar front-end status information and system operation status information into a standard communication frame format and send it to the radar display and control interface through the network;

[0021] The command parameter receiving interface is used to receive and parse the parameters sent by the radar display and control interface, and hand them over to the parameter management module to complete the system parameter update.

[0022] Furthermore, the parameter management module stores the system working parameters and radar working parameters configured by the user in a configuration file, and updates the parameters in real time during system operation.

[0023] Furthermore, the computing resource scheduling module includes a CPI data queue, a main thread, and multiple processing thread groups. The CPI data queue is used to store the data to be processed. The main thread distributes the processing data to each processing thread group for processing, and the processing thread group executes the processing operation according to the process of the signal processing flow scheduling module.

[0024] Furthermore, the signal processing flow scheduling module includes a processing data structure, a processing data bus, and a signal processing configuration module. The module adopts the form of a soft bus, and processes the data to be processed according to the signal processing flow configured by the user, and sequentially calls the corresponding standardized signal processing modules for processing. The signal processing configuration module is the adaptation interface between the processing data bus and the signal processing module.

[0025] Furthermore, the radar parameter configuration interface is used to configure the radar waveform, scanning mode, and signal processing parameters in real time.

[0026] Furthermore, the standardized signal processing module defines the input and output interfaces, parameter update, and debugging interfaces of the signal processing module. Users inherit the standardized signal processing module and override the signal processing virtual functions in the standard module with custom signal processing algorithms.

[0027] Furthermore, the standardized signal processing module defines a unified basic operation interface, including FFT, filtering, and matrix operations, which are respectively implemented based on CPU, GPU, or FPGA processors at the bottom layer, and the computing resources can be flexibly switched.

[0028] Based on the same inventive concept, the present invention also provides a signal processing method based on an extensible and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system, including the following steps:

[0029] Step 1, system working parameter configuration. The system obtains the working parameters from the configuration file and the system configuration interface.

[0030] Step 2, radar working parameter configuration. The system obtains the radar working parameters and radar phase data from the configuration file and the radar parameter configuration interface.

[0031] Step 3, initialize the basic component module.

[0032] Step 4, Initialize the hardware interface driver. The system, according to the working parameters obtained in Step 1, sequentially completes the hardware reset and software initialization of the radar data communication module, network communication module, and real-time data storage module;

[0033] Step 5, Initialize the computing resource scheduling module and signal processing flow scheduling module. The system, according to the parameters obtained in Step 1 and Step 2, initializes the data processing queue, processing thread group, and standardized signal processing module;

[0034] Step 6, Send the radar working parameters to the radar front end through the radar data communication module, and receive the original radar echo data. The original radar echo data is sliced according to the coherent processing interval and sent to the CPI data queue in the computing resource scheduling module;

[0035] Step 7, The computing resource scheduling module parses the data to be processed in the CPI data queue and generates the processed data to be sent to the idle processing thread group for processing;

[0036] Step 8, The processing thread group sequentially sends the data to be processed to the corresponding standardized signal processing module according to the signal processing flow for processing, and outputs the corresponding processed data and target information;

[0037] Step 9, The real-time data storage module stores the original echo data and processed data in the disk in a predetermined format;

[0038] Step 10, Package and upload the target information output by the processing through the network communication module to the radar display and control interface;

[0039] Among them, Steps 6 to 10 are executed in parallel in a pipeline manner.

[0040] Compared with the prior art, the present invention has the following remarkable advantages: (1) The present invention decouples the radar front-end hardware from the signal processing software, and realizes the communication between the front and rear ends through a standard interface protocol, so that the radar front-end hardware can be quickly upgraded and expanded; (2) The present invention is designed modularly, with modules such as data transmission, resource scheduling, and signal processing being independent, and a configuration interface is provided. Users can quickly reconstruct the software according to actual task requirements and can quickly respond to task requirements; (3) The present invention provides a unified input-output interface and basic computing functions based on different computing hardware, enabling users to customize processing algorithms, decoupling the algorithms from the underlying computing hardware. Users can focus on algorithm implementation without having to rewrite the system scheduling, greatly improving the development efficiency of the radar system; BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0041] Figure 1 It is a hierarchical structure diagram of a software-based radar signal processing system.

[0042] Figure 2It is a schematic diagram of the working process of a software-defined radar signal processing system.

[0043] Figure 3 It is a schematic diagram of the principle of the radar data communication module.

[0044] Figure 4 It is a schematic diagram of the principle of the computing resource scheduling module.

[0045] Figure 5 It is a schematic diagram of the principle of the signal processing flow scheduling module.

[0046] Figure 6 It is a partial parameter schematic diagram of the system parameter configuration interface and the radar parameter configuration interface. Detailed implementation

[0047] The present invention proposes a scalable and reconfigurable software-defined radar signal processing system and method. The system includes three levels: a component layer, a scheduling layer, and an interface layer, where

[0048] The component layer includes a high-speed radar data communication module based on optical fiber and PCIe interfaces, which is used to receive echo data from the radar front end and send radar command parameters to the radar front end; a real-time data storage module, which realizes the real-time storage of radar raw echo data and processing process data to a disk array; a network communication module, which defines a general network data protocol and a network control protocol, and is used to upload the system processing output target information and status information to the radar display and control interface, and receive radar control commands from the radar display and control interface; a basic component module, which is responsible for providing various basic functions for upper-layer applications, such as thread-safe queues, window function management, logging, and performance statistics.

[0049] The scheduling layer includes a parameter management module, which is responsible for the parameter initialization and real-time update of the entire system; a computing resource scheduling module, which is responsible for managing computing resources and realizing coarse-grained thread scheduling; a signal processing flow scheduling module, which realizes the management of the signal processing flow and flexibly switches signal processing algorithms according to different modes and different requirements.

[0050] The interface layer includes a system configuration interface and a radar parameter configuration interface, which provide a unified standardized interface for users to realize the real-time configuration of the system operation parameters and radar working parameters; a standardized signal processing module, which includes various basic computing function interfaces, such as FFT, filtering, and matrix operations, and at the same time provides standardized algorithm input and output interfaces, which can be used by users to customize signal processing algorithms.

[0051] The purpose of the present invention is to establish a general processing platform, through standardized interfaces and protocols, to achieve software-hardware decoupling, complete real-time software-defined radar signal processing, which is universal for the radar front end and has the characteristics of high flexibility and customizability for users.

[0052] Combined with Figure 1 ,the present invention provides an extensible and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system and method. With a high-performance server as the system platform and multi-core CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs as the computing cores, it includes a radar data communication module, a real-time data storage module, a network communication module, a basic component module, a parameter management module, a computing resource scheduling module, a signal processing flow scheduling module, a standardized signal processing module, and an upper-layer configuration interface, etc.;

[0053] The radar data communication module: is used to implement communication between the radar front-end and the server, including receiving raw echo data from the radar front-end and sending radar operating parameters to the radar front-end, etc.;

[0054] The real-time data storage module: is used to store the radar raw echo data and the intermediate data generated during the radar signal processing in real time onto the disk;

[0055] The network communication module: is used to upload the target information and system status information processed by the system to the radar display and control interface, and receive control instructions from the radar display and control interface;

[0056] The basic component module: is used to provide basic functions required for the system operation, such as a multi-threaded safe queue, a logging system, a debugging interface, window function management, etc.;

[0057] The parameter management module: is used to manage the parameters of the entire system and complete the parameter update of the entire system when the parameters change;

[0058] The computing resource scheduling module: is used to manage and schedule thread groups, allocate computing tasks, and complete the radar signal processing computing tasks.

[0059] The signal processing flow scheduling module: is used to call each signal processing module in a soft bus manner according to the user-configured signal processing flow to process the radar echo data.

[0060] The standardized signal processing module: is used to define standard signal processing interfaces, including input and output data structures, parameter update interfaces, user debugging interfaces, and provide basic computing brain functions based on different computing hardware to facilitate users to customize signal processing algorithms;

[0061] The upper-layer configuration interface: includes a system configuration interface and a radar parameter configuration interface, and is used for users to configure system parameters and radar parameters.

[0062] This architecture defines a standard radar data communication interface based on fiber optic and PCIE interfaces. Through this interface, the raw radar echo data is transmitted to the server, and then a unified configuration interface is provided to the user. According to the user's configuration, the hardware resources are automatically scheduled to complete the preset radar signal processing flow, and then the results are transmitted to the radar display and control interface through the network.

[0063] The working process of the present invention will be further described below in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and embodiments.

[0064] Embodiment

[0065] This embodiment is based on the phased array radar front end, with a high-performance Linux server as the system platform and a multi-core CPU as the computing core. A software-defined radar signal processing system that is scalable and reconfigurable is used to design and develop the signal processing backend functions.

[0066] Combined Figure 2 , the working process of the general software-defined radar signal processing system is as follows:

[0067] Step 1, system working parameter configuration. The system obtains the working parameters from the configuration file and the system configuration interface;

[0068] Step 2, radar working parameter configuration. The system obtains the radar working parameters, radar phase data, etc. from the configuration file and the radar parameter configuration interface;

[0069] Step 3, initialize the basic component module;

[0070] Step 4, hardware interface driver initialization. According to the working parameters obtained in Step 1, the system sequentially completes the hardware reset and software initialization of the radar data communication module, network communication module, and real-time data storage module;

[0071] Step 5, initialize the computing resource scheduling module and the signal processing flow scheduling module. According to the parameters obtained in Step 1 and Step 2, the system initializes the processing data queue, processing thread group, and signal processing module;

[0072] Step 6, send the radar working parameters to the radar front end through the radar data communication module, and receive the radar echo data. The radar echo data is segmented according to the coherent processing interval and sent into the processing data queue in the computing resource scheduling module;

[0073] Step 7, the computing resource scheduling module sends the data to be processed in the queue to the idle processing thread group for processing;

[0074] Step 8, the processing thread group sends the data to be processed to the corresponding signal processing module for processing in sequence according to the signal processing flow;

[0075] Step 9, the real-time data storage module stores the original data and the data during the processing process into the disk in a predetermined format;

[0076] Step 10, the target information output by the processing is packaged and uploaded to the radar display and control interface through the network communication module;

[0077] Among them, Steps 6 to 10 are executed in a pipeline-style parallel loop.

[0078] Combined Figure 3 , the radar data communication module includes a synchronization module, a parameter distribution module, a data reception module, and a data segmentation module;

[0079] The synchronization module is responsible for timing synchronization with the radar front end, including optical fiber data transceiver synchronization, radar working timing synchronization, etc.;

[0080] The parameter distribution module is controlled by the synchronization module, responsible for extracting parameters from the working parameter queue, encoding them according to the parameter distribution protocol, and distributing them to the radar front end through the optical fiber;

[0081] The data reception module is controlled by the synchronization module, responsible for reading data of a specified length into the server memory through the optical fiber. When reading, four threads are used for parallel reading to improve the reading speed. After the reading is completed, the read data is converted into a smart pointer and sent into the original data queue, and then the next loop reading starts.

[0082] The data segmentation module obtains a piece of data from the original data queue, and then parses it according to the data protocol. The whole piece of data may contain data of one or more CPIs (Coherent Processing Interval). When segmenting, the data is segmented according to the CPI. When segmenting, it is directly segmented in the original memory space without memory copy operations. Only the starting address of each CPI data needs to be found and stored in the CPI data queue for waiting for the next step of processing.

[0083] Combined Figure 4 , a simplified block diagram of the computing resource scheduling module is shown. The computing resource scheduling module includes a CPI data queue and a processing data queue for data buffering, as well as a main thread and several processing groups.

[0084] The CPI data queue is used for data buffering between the radar data communication module and the computing resource scheduling module;

[0085] The main thread module: responsible for initializing and controlling the operation of the processing groups, extracting CPI data from the CPI data queue at the same time, packing it into processing data and sending it into the processing data queue, and notifying the processing group threads to process through semaphores;

[0086] Processing group module: responsible for implementing the complete signal processing flow. Each processing group module may use multiple hardware threads for calculation. After receiving the semaphore from the main thread, it retrieves data from the processing data queue for processing.

[0087] Combined with Figure 5 , the implementation method of the signal processing flow scheduling module is described. First, the module retrieves the data to be processed from the processing data queue. According to the configured process, the data to be processed is sent into the signal processing configuration function and packed into a signal processing configuration data structure according to the input requirements of the signal processing module. This data structure includes the input and output data structures of the signal processing module, signal processing parameters, and the number of allocated threads, etc. Then it is sent into the signal processing module for processing. After completing the entire process, the processing output is sent to the network data communication module and uploaded to the radar display and control interface.

[0088] Combined with Figure 6 , some of the parameters that can be configured by the system configuration interface and the radar parameter configuration interface are listed. First, the working parameters of the radar data communication module, real-time data storage module, logging system, and network communication module are configured through the system configuration interface. Then, through the radar working parameter configuration interface, the radar hardware parameters, radar waveform parameters, and signal processing flow parameters in different working modes are configured. In this embodiment, three working modes are designed, namely the short-range mode, the long-range mode, and the target recognition mode. Among them, the working parameters of the short-range mode and the long-range mode are different, but the signal processing flow is the same. The target recognition mode has different working parameters and signal processing flows from the other two modes. Then when the system runs, the radar working parameters are automatically generated and issued according to the pre-configured parameters, and the thread resources are automatically scheduled and allocated for signal processing. Thus, the configuration of the software-defined radar signal processing system is completed.

Claims

1. A scalable and reconfigurable software radar signal processing system, characterized in that: Includes component layer, scheduling layer and interface layer; The component layer includes a radar data communication module, a real-time data storage module, a network communication module and a basic component module, which are used to implement the underlying hardware driver and provide a standard interface for the upper layer application; The scheduling layer includes a parameter management module, a computing resource scheduling module and a signal processing flow scheduling module, which are used to manage and update system and radar parameters and realize coarse-grained thread scheduling and signal processing flow scheduling; The interface layer includes a system configuration interface, a radar parameter configuration interface and a standardized signal processing module, which are used to provide users with a standard configuration interface, implement basic signal processing algorithms, and provide users with an algorithm customization interface.

2. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The radar data communication module comprises: Synchronization module, used to synchronize the data readable signal, data length signal, command parameter request signal and other timing signals between the radar front end and the system; Parameter sending module, used to send radar waveform, frequency, and beam working parameters to the radar front end; The data receiving module is used to read the radar echo data from the PCIe interface in a ping-pong manner and write the radar front-end working parameters; The data segmentation module is used to segment the received radar echo data stream into coherent processing data blocks according to the working parameters to facilitate subsequent processing.

3. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The real-time data storage module comprises: The radar raw data storage submodule is used to save the radar raw data to the disk array in a specified format; The processing data storage submodule is used to store the intermediate data generated during the signal processing process to the disk in a specified format.

4. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The network communication module comprises: The processing result upload interface is used to package the target information output by the radar processing into a standard communication frame format and send it to the radar display and control interface through the network; System status upload interface, used to package radar front-end status information and system operation status information into a standard communication frame format and send it to the radar display and control interface through the network; The command parameter receiving interface is used to receive and parse the parameters sent by the radar display and control interface, and hand them over to the parameter management module to complete the system parameter update.

5. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The parameter management module stores the system operating parameters and radar operating parameters configured by the user in a configuration file, and updates the parameters in real time when the system is running.

6. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The computing resource scheduling module includes a CPI data queue, a main thread and multiple processing thread groups, wherein the CPI data queue is used to store data to be processed, the main thread distributes the processing data to each processing thread group for processing, and the processing thread group performs processing operations according to the process of the signal processing process scheduling module.

7. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The signal processing flow scheduling module includes a processing data structure, a processing data bus and a signal processing configuration module; the module adopts a soft bus form, and calls the corresponding standardized signal processing modules in sequence to process the data to be processed according to the signal processing flow configured by the user. The signal processing configuration module is an adapter interface between the processing data bus and the signal processing module.

8. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The radar parameter configuration interface is used to configure radar waveform, scanning mode, and signal processing parameters in real time.

9. The scalable and reconfigurable software-based radar signal processing system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The standardized signal processing module defines the input and output interfaces, parameter updating and debugging interfaces of the signal processing module. The user inherits the standardized signal processing module and overwrites the signal processing virtual functions in the standard module with a user-defined signal processing algorithm.

10. A signal processing method based on the scalable and reconfigurable software radar signal processing system according to any one of claims 1 to 9, characterized in that: The steps include: Step 1: System operating parameter configuration. The system obtains operating parameters from the configuration file and the system configuration interface. Step 2: Radar operating parameter configuration: the system obtains radar operating parameters and radar phase data from the configuration file and the radar parameter configuration interface; Step 3, initialize the basic component module; Step 4: Initialize the hardware interface driver. The system completes the hardware reset and software initialization of the radar data communication module, the network communication module, and the real-time data storage module in sequence according to the working parameters obtained in step 1. Step 5, initializing the computing resource scheduling module and the signal processing flow scheduling module. The system initializes the processing data queue, the processing thread group and the standardized signal processing module according to the parameters obtained in steps 1 and 2; Step 6: Send radar operating parameters to the radar front end through the radar data communication module, receive the radar original echo data, divide the radar original echo data according to the coherent processing interval, and send it to the CPI data queue in the computing resource scheduling module; Step 7: The computing resource scheduling module parses the data to be processed in the CPI data queue to generate processing data and sends it to the idle processing thread group for processing; Step 8: The processing thread group sends the data to be processed to the corresponding standardized signal processing module in sequence according to the signal processing flow for processing, and outputs the corresponding processing process data and target information; Step 9, the real-time data storage module stores the original echo data and the processed data in a disk according to a predetermined format; Step 10, the processed output target information is packaged and uploaded to the radar display and control interface through the network communication module; Among them, steps 6 to 10 are executed in parallel in a pipeline manner.

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