FPGA-Based Data Processing Using High-Level Synthesis On The Antarctic Demonstrator For The Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (ADAPT)

Author

• Marion Sudvarg, Missouri University of Science and TechnologyFollow
• Marion Sudvarg
• Longhao Huang
• Boran Yang
• Blake Bal
• Roger Chamberlain
• Jeremy Buhler
• Leonardo Di Venere
• Leonardo Di Venere
• Davide Serini
• James Buckley
• Matthew Andrew
• Blake Bal
• Elisabetta E. Bissaldi
• Richard G. Bose
• Dana Braun
• James H. Buckley
• Jeremy Buhler

Abstract

FPGAs are widely deployed on high-energy astrophysics telescopes to read out sensor data from front-end electronics. To support continuous data streams or high trigger rates, FPGA logic may be employed to process raw sensor readout values, reducing the volume of data transmitted, processed, and stored by downstream CPU-based computational platforms. Across instruments, these FPGA-based processing pipelines often have similar semantics and share common stages. However, diverse telescope designs require unique implementations of the constituent algorithms, and the logic is often rewritten from scratch for a new instrument. Writing, simulating, and debugging firmware is difficult and time consuming. However, High-Level Synthesis (HLS) allows these algorithms to be implemented in a high-level language, enabling fast prototyping and deployment. Nonetheless, writing performant HLS code is not straightforward, and requires an understanding of how the synthesis tools convert high-level language constructs, compiler-specific pragmas, and vendor-provided template libraries to hardware circuits. This work presents an initial HLS library of common algorithms for deployment in particle astrophysics detectors. We apply it to the Antarctic Demonstrator for the Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (ADAPT), an MeV–TeV gamma-ray instrument that combines a pair tracker and Compton telescope anticipated to fly on a high-altitude balloon during the 2026–27 Antarctic season. Our library enables efficient processing of digitized waveform data from ADAPT's >2000 sensor readout channels, including per-channel photon counting and cross-channel centroiding. Our library can process hundreds of thousands of event triggers per second when deployed on embedded FPGAs flying aboard the ADAPT instrument, while providing flexibility and extensibility.

Recommended Citation

M. Sudvarg and M. Sudvarg and L. Huang and B. Yang and B. Bal and R. Chamberlain and J. Buhler and L. D. Venere and L. D. Venere and D. Serini and J. Buckley and M. Andrew and B. Bal and E. E. Bissaldi and R. G. Bose and D. Braun and J. H. Buckley and J. Buhler, "FPGA-Based Data Processing Using High-Level Synthesis On The Antarctic Demonstrator For The Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (ADAPT)," Proceedings of Science, vol. 501, article no. 852, SISSA Medialab Srl, Dec 2025.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.22323/1.501.0852

Meeting Name

39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2025)

Department(s)

Computer Science

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant 80NSSC21K1741

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1824-8039

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publication Date

30 Dec 2025