German Aerospace Centre signs with Celoxica

DLR, the German Aerospace Centre, is working in partnership with a design services team from Celoxica to develop a new range of multimedia terminals for broadband satellite systems.

DLR, the German Aerospace Centre, is working in partnership with a design services team from Celoxica to develop a new range of multimedia terminals for broadband satellite systems.

As part the agreement DLR has signed a contract for Celoxica's DK1 design suite as well as Celoxica's RC-1000 development boards for rapid prototyping.

Celoxica will work with DLR's Broadband Satellite Networks team at the Institute of Communications and Navigation.

DLR is using the DK1 design suite and the RC-1000 board to implement protocols that have been specified and validated in Specification and Description Language (SDL).

Dr Axel Jahn, Group Leader at DLR said, "The FPGA has traditionally been viewed as a tactical hardware platform for glue logic rather than core design work.

Celoxica is changing this perception with a design methodology that opens up new possibilities for FPGAs.

We see considerable potential for this approach in satellite systems for mobile communication and multimedia applications.

Especially for complex multimedia satellite protocols where the design engineer benefits from focusing on new ideas and concepts".

The project with DLR follows Celoxica's development of a proof-of-concept demonstrator developed in conjunction with Marconi and Xilinx.

Designed and built in just three months, the FPGA-based terminal demonstrated how, by using just an FPGA and DK1 without the need for a processor or operating system, a single chip could be remotely rewired to leverage different multimedia applications including an IP telephone, an MP3 player, a games console and a graphics display.

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