Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

The objective of this paper is Development and Implementation of parallel to serial data converter using Aurora protocol for high speed serial data transmission at the rate of 3.125Gbps by using architectural features of Virtex-7 FPGA. It involves the study and configuring the Xilinx Core Generator Tool to achieve the required high speed serial data transmission by using of Aurora 8b/10b Protocol & Multi-Gigabit Transceivers present in Virtex-7 FPGA. Firstly, a 192-bit parallel data is generated using simulators, which is implemented using VHDL language. The 192-bit data is sent to Asynchronous First-In First-Out (AFIFO) as input and produces an output of 32-bit parallel data. This data is sent to the aurora module in parallel form as successive frames (i.e. 6 frames, each frame consists of 4 bytes). Finally, the 192-bit parallel data is transmitted to the receiver module serially over fiber optic cable at the rate of 3.125Gbps using architectural features of virtex7 FPGA. Finally, the data is transmitted on dual independent aurora channels and the entire logic will be tested for its complete functionality in standalone mode by porting on to the Virtex-7 FPGA based custom Hardware. 

Keywords: Aurora Protocol, Independent Aurora Channels, Serial Data Transmission, Virtex-7 FPGA, AFIFO, GTX TILE, MGT’s