Using FPGAs for Building Reconfigurable Symbolic Sensors

Abstract- Symbolic Sensors can answer a query by a qualitative answer, using linguistic symbols instead of the usual numerical representation. Because there are no sensors with a built-in symbolic behaviour, the solution is to develop add-on modules for enhancing common sensors with such a set of features. These add-ons can be built either in software or in hardware. This paper focuses on the hardware solution and it aims to solve the lack of flexibility issue by using reconfigurable devices such as FPGAs. These devices allow dynamic reconfiguration and they provide the required flexibility for the entire system, without having a significant decrease in performance. The experiments conducted during the research prove that such a solution is efficient and reliable, thus being a serious alternative for the older solutions developed in software. I