Design and Implementation of FPGA-Based Proximity Warning System for Vehicles

Abstract

The rise in traffic congestion in regions such as India has resulted in an alarming rise in the number of fatalities resulting from roadway accidents, primarily through situations where visibility conditions are limited (such as at an industrial site or a clustered area). Existing commercial detection systems are often ineffective, given their reliance on conventional sensing technologies that do not perform well under deteriorating weather conditions. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new, reliable, and real-time detection systems [2]. In this paper, we will present the creation of a real-time Proximity Warning System (PWS) that employs millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar principles within a reconfigurable FPGA architecture. We implemented our design using Verilog HDL on a Digilent Cmod A7 board (Artix-7) and emphasized timely signal processing characteristics. At this phase of development, we are validating our internal processing pipeline through a dedicated radar emulation module. By producing dynamic distance measurements through this module, we are able to verify our threshold-based logic for classifying safe, caution, and dangerous zones. 

Functional simulations performed in the Xilinx Vivado environment demonstrate that our system processes the visual LED alerts and audible buzzer warnings with minimal delay, while the RTL schematic that is produced confirms that our logic is completely synthesizable and hardware deployment optimized. Thus, based on our results, we believe this FPGA-based approach provides a cost-effective and scalable basis for future integration of physical mmWave sensors and to improve the safety of automotive applications.