FPGA implementation of time–frequency analysis algorithms for laser welding monitoring

The on-line monitoring and detection of defects in laser welding is a basic manufacturing requirement in several applicative contexts, as vehicle assembly in automotive production. This work presents the FPGA implementation of time–frequency analysis algorithms as an effective solution compared with pure software implementation based on different modern processors. In particular the proposed FPGA based approach not only satisfies the processing constraints of the considered application, but still offers a high degree of flexibility and modularity.