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33 %% \author{\IEEEauthorblockN{Authors Name/s per 1st Affiliation (Author)}
34 %% \IEEEauthorblockA{line 1 (of Affiliation): dept. name of organization\\
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48 \title{Using FPGAs for high speed and real time cantilever deflection estimation}
49 \author{\IEEEauthorblockN{Raphaël Couturier\IEEEauthorrefmark{1}, Stéphane Domas\IEEEauthorrefmark{1}, Gwenhaël Goavec-Merou\IEEEauthorrefmark{2} and Michel Lenczner\IEEEauthorrefmark{2}}
50 \IEEEauthorblockA{\IEEEauthorrefmark{1}FEMTO-ST, DISC, University of Franche-Comte, Belfort, France\\
51 \{raphael.couturier,stephane.domas\}@univ-fcomte.fr}
52 \IEEEauthorblockA{\IEEEauthorrefmark{2}FEMTO-ST, Time-Frequency, University of Franche-Comte, Besançon, France\\
53 \{michel.lenczner@utbm.fr,gwenhael.goavec@trabucayre.com}
69 {\it keywords}: FPGA, cantilever, interferometry.
72 \section{Introduction}
74 Cantilevers are used inside atomic force microscope which provides high
75 resolution images of surfaces. Several technics have been used to measure the
76 displacement of cantilevers in litterature. For example, it is possible to
77 determine accurately the deflection with different mechanisms.
78 In~\cite{CantiPiezzo01}, authors used piezoresistor integrated into the
79 cantilever. Nevertheless this approach suffers from the complexity of the
80 microfabrication process needed to implement the sensor in the cantilever.
81 In~\cite{CantiCapacitive03}, authors have presented an cantilever mechanism
82 based on capacitive sensing. This kind of technic also involves to instrument
83 the cantiliver which result in a complex fabrication process.
85 In this paper our attention is focused on a method based on interferometry to
86 measure cantilevers' displacements. In this method cantilevers are illuminated
87 by an optic source. The interferometry produces fringes on each cantilevers
88 which enables to compute the cantilever displacement. In order to analyze the
89 fringes a high speed camera is used. Images need to be processed quickly and
90 then a estimation method is required to determine the displacement of each
91 cantilever. In~\cite{AFMCSEM11}, the authors have used an algorithm based on
92 spline to estimate the cantilevers' positions.
93 %%RAPH : ce qui est génant c'est qu'ils ne parlent pas de spline dans ce papier...
94 The overall process gives
95 accurate results but all the computation are performed on a standard computer
96 using labview. Consequently, the main drawback of this implementation is that
97 the computer is a bootleneck in the overall process. In this paper we propose to
98 use a method based on least square and to implement all the computation on a
101 The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section~\ref{sec:measure}
102 describes more precisely the measurement process. Our solution based on the
103 least square method and the implementation on FPGA is presented in
104 Section~\ref{sec:solus}. Experimentations are described in
105 Section~\ref{sec:results}. Finally a conclusion and some perspectives are
110 %% quelques ref commentées sur les calculs basés sur l'interférométrie
112 \section{Measurement principles}
115 In order to develop simple, cost effective and user-friendly cantilever arrays,
116 authors of ~\cite{AFMCSEM11} have developped a system based of
117 interferometry. In opposition to other optical based systems, using a laser beam
118 deflection scheme and sentitive to the angular displacement of the cantilever,
119 interferometry is sensitive to the optical path difference induced by the
120 vertical displacement of the cantilever.
121 %%RAPH : est ce qu'on pique une image? génant ou non?
122 The system build by authors of~\cite{AFMCSEM11} has been developped based on a
123 Linnick interferomter~\cite{Sinclair:05}. A laser beam is first split (by the
124 splitter) into a reference beam and a sample beam that reachs the cantilever
125 array. In order to be able to move the cantilever array, it is mounted on a
126 translation and rotational stage with five degrees of freedom. The optical
127 system is also fixed to the stage. Thus, the cantilever array is centered in the
128 optical system which can be adjusted accurately. The beam illuminates the array
129 by a microscope objective and the light reflects on the cantilevers. Likewise
130 the reference beam reflects on a movable mirror. A CMOS camera chip records the
131 reference and sample beams which are recombined in the beam splitter and the
132 interferogram. At the beginning of each experiment, the movable mirror is fitted
133 manually in order to align the interferometric fringes approximately parallel to
134 the cantilevers. When cantilevers move due to the surface, the bending of
135 cantilevers produce movements in the fringes that can be detected with the CMOS
136 camera. Finally the fringes need to be analyzed. In~\cite{AFMCSEM11}, the
137 authors used a LabView program to compute the cantilevers' movements from the
146 \subsection{Architecture}
148 %% description de l'architecture générale de l'acquisition d'images
149 %% avec au milieu une unité de traitement dont on ne précise pas ce
152 %% image tirée des expériences.
154 \subsection{Cantilever deflection estimation}
157 As shown on image \ref{img:img-xp}, each cantilever is covered by
158 interferometric fringes. The fringes will distort when cantilevers are
159 deflected. Estimating the deflection is done by computing this
160 distortion. For that, (ref A. Meister + M Favre) proposed a method
161 based on computing the phase of the fringes, at the base of each
162 cantilever, near the tip, and on the base of the array. They assume
163 that a linear relation binds these phases, which can be use to
164 "unwrap" the phase at the tip and to determine the deflection.\\
166 More precisely, segment of pixels are extracted from images taken by a
167 high-speed camera. These segments are large enough to cover several
168 interferometric fringes and are placed at the base and near the tip of
169 the cantilevers. They are called base profile and tip profile in the
170 following. Furthermore, a reference profile is taken on the base of
171 the cantilever array.
173 The pixels intensity $I$ (in gray level) of each profile is modelized by :
177 I(x) = ax+b+A.cos(2\pi f.x + \theta)
180 where $x$ is the position of a pixel in its associated segment.
182 The global method consists in two main sequences. The first one aims
183 to determin the frequency $f$ of each profile with an algorithm based
184 on spline interpolation (see section \ref{algo-spline}). It also
185 computes the coefficient used for unwrapping the phase. The second one
186 is the acquisition loop, while which images are taken at regular time
187 steps. For each image, the phase $\theta$ of all profiles is computed
188 to obtain, after unwrapping, the deflection of cantilevers.
190 \subsection{Design goals}
193 If we put aside some hardware issues like the speed of the link
194 between the camera and the computation unit, the time to deserialize
195 pixels and to store them in memory, ... the phase computation is
196 obviously the bottle-neck of the whole process. For example, if we
197 consider the camera actually in use, an exposition time of 2.5ms for
198 $1024\times 1204$ pixels seems the minimum that can be reached. For a
199 $10\times 10$ cantilever array, if we neglect the time to extract
200 pixels, it implies that computing the deflection of a single
201 cantilever should take less than 25$\mu$s, thus 12.5$\mu$s by phase.\\
203 In fact, this timing is a very hard constraint. Let consider a very
204 small programm that initializes twenty million of doubles in memory
205 and then does 1000000 cumulated sums on 20 contiguous values
206 (experimental profiles have about this size). On an intel Core 2 Duo
207 E6650 at 2.33GHz, this program reaches an average of 155Mflops. It
208 implies that the phase computation algorithm should not take more than
209 $240\times 12.5 = 1937$ floating operations. For integers, it gives
212 %% to be continued ...
214 %% � faire : timing de l'algo spline en C avec atan et tout le bordel.
219 \section{Proposed solution}
223 \subsection{FPGA constraints}
225 %% contraintes imposées par le FPGA : algo pipeline/parallele, pas d'op math complexe, ...
228 \subsection{Considered algorithms}
230 Two solutions have been studied to achieve phase computation. The
231 original one, proposed by A. Meister and M. Favre, is based on
232 interpolation by splines. It allows to compute frequency and
233 phase. The second one, detailed in this article, is based on a
234 classical least square method but suppose that frequency is already
237 \subsubsection{Spline algorithm}
238 \label{sec:algo-spline}
239 Let consider a profile $P$, that is a segment of $M$ pixels with an
240 intensity in gray levels. Let call $I(x)$ the intensity of profile in $x
243 At first, only $M$ values of $I$ are known, for $x = 0, 1,
244 \ldots,M-1$. A normalisation allows to scale known intensities into
245 $[-1,1]$. We compute splines that fit at best these normalised
246 intensities. Splines are used to interpolate $N = k\times M$ points
247 (typically $k=3$ is sufficient), within $[0,M[$. Let call $x^s$ the
248 coordinates of these $N$ points and $I^s$ their intensities.
250 In order to have the frequency, the mean line $a.x+b$ (see equation \ref{equ:profile}) of $I^s$ is
251 computed. Finding intersections of $I^s$ and this line allow to obtain
252 the period thus the frequency.
254 The phase is computed via the equation :
256 \theta = atan \left[ \frac{\sum_{i=0}^{N-1} sin(2\pi f x^s_i) \times I^s(x^s_i)}{\sum_{i=0}^{N-1} cos(2\pi f x^s_i) \times I^s(x^s_i)} \right]
259 Two things can be noticed. Firstly, the frequency could also be
260 obtained using the derivates of spline equations, which only implies
261 to solve quadratic equations. Secondly, frequency of each profile is
262 computed a single time, before the acquisition loop. Thus, $sin(2\pi f
263 x^s_i)$ and $cos(2\pi f x^s_i)$ could also be computed before the loop, which leads to a
264 much faster computation of $\theta$.
266 \subsubsection{Least square algorithm}
268 Assuming that we compute the phase during the acquisition loop,
269 equation \ref{equ:profile} has only 4 parameters :$a, b, A$, and
270 $\theta$, $f$ and $x$ being already known. Since $I$ is non-linear, a
271 least square method based an Gauss-newton algorithm must be used to
272 determine these four parameters. Since it is an iterative process
273 ending with a convergence criterion, it is obvious that it is not
274 particularly adapted to our design goals.
276 Fortunatly, it is quite simple to reduce the number of parameters to
277 only $\theta$. Let $x^p$ be the coordinates of pixels in a segment of
278 size $M$. Thus, $x^p = 0, 1, \ldots, M-1$. Let $I(x^p)$ be their
279 intensity. Firstly, we "remove" the slope by computing :
281 \[I^{corr}(x^p) = I(x^p) - a.x^p - b\]
283 Since linear equation coefficients are searched, a classical least
284 square method can be used to determine $a$ and $b$ :
286 \[a = \frac{covar(x^p,I(x^p))}{var(x^p)} \]
288 Assuming an overlined symbol means an average, then :
290 \[b = \overline{I(x^p)} - a.\overline{{x^p}}\]
292 Let $A$ be the amplitude of $I^{corr}$, i.e.
294 \[A = \frac{max(I^{corr}) - min(I^{corr})}{2}\]
296 Then, the least square method to find $\theta$ is reduced to search the minimum of :
298 \[\sum_{i=0}^{M-1} \left[ cos(2\pi f.i + \theta) - \frac{I^{corr}(i)}{A} \right]^2\]
300 It is equivalent to derivate this expression and to solve the following equation :
303 2\left[ cos\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} I^{corr}(i).sin(2\pi f.i) + sin\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} I^{corr}(i).cos(2\pi f.i)\right] \\
304 - A\left[ cos2\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} sin(4\pi f.i) + sin2\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} cos(4\pi f.i)\right] = 0
307 Several points can be noticed :
309 \item As in the spline method, some parts of this equation can be
310 computed before the acquisition loop. It is the case of sums that do
311 not depend on $\theta$ :
313 \[ \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} sin(4\pi f.i), \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} cos(4\pi f.i) \]
315 \item Lookup tables for $sin(2\pi f.i)$ and $cos(2\pi f.i)$ can also be
318 \item The simplest method to find the good $\theta$ is to discretize
319 $[-\pi,\pi]$ in $N$ steps, and to search which step leads to the
320 result closest to zero. By the way, three other lookup tables can
321 also be computed before the loop :
323 \[ sin \theta, cos \theta, \left[ cos 2\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} sin(4\pi f.i) + sin 2\theta \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} cos(4\pi f.i)\right] \]
325 \item This search can be very fast using a dichotomous process in $log_2(N)$
329 Finally, the whole summarizes in an algorithm (called LSQ in the following) in two parts, one before and one during the acquisition loop :
331 \caption{LSQ algorithm - before acquisition loop.}
332 \label{alg:lsq-before}
334 $M \leftarrow $ number of pixels of the profile\\
335 I[] $\leftarrow $ intensities of pixels\\
336 $f \leftarrow $ frequency of the profile\\
337 $s4i \leftarrow \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} sin(4\pi f.i)$\\
338 $c4i \leftarrow \sum_{i=0}^{M-1} cos(4\pi f.i)$\\
339 $nb_s \leftarrow $ number of discretization steps of $[-\pi,\pi]$\\
341 \For{$i=0$ to $nb_s $}{
342 $\theta \leftarrow -\pi + 2\pi\times \frac{i}{nb_s}$\\
343 lut\_sin[$i$] $\leftarrow sin \theta$\\
344 lut\_cos[$i$] $\leftarrow cos \theta$\\
345 lut\_A[$i$] $\leftarrow cos 2 \theta \times s4i + sin 2 \theta \times c4i$\\
346 lut\_sinfi[$i$] $\leftarrow sin (2\pi f.i)$\\
347 lut\_cosfi[$i$] $\leftarrow cos (2\pi f.i)$\\
352 \caption{LSQ algorithm - during acquisition loop.}
353 \label{alg:lsq-during}
355 $\bar{x} \leftarrow \frac{M-1}{2}$\\
356 $\bar{y} \leftarrow 0$, $x_{var} \leftarrow 0$, $xy_{covar} \leftarrow 0$\\
357 \For{$i=0$ to $M-1$}{
358 $\bar{y} \leftarrow \bar{y} + $ I[$i$]\\
359 $x_{var} \leftarrow x_{var} + (i-\bar{x})^2$\\
361 $\bar{y} \leftarrow \frac{\bar{y}}{M}$\\
362 \For{$i=0$ to $M-1$}{
363 $xy_{covar} \leftarrow xy_{covar} + (i-\bar{x}) \times (I[i]-\bar{y})$\\
365 $slope \leftarrow \frac{xy_{covar}}{x_{var}}$\\
366 $start \leftarrow y_{moy} - slope\times \bar{x}$\\
367 \For{$i=0$ to $M-1$}{
368 $I[i] \leftarrow I[i] - start - slope\times i$\tcc*[f]{slope removal}\\
371 $I_{max} \leftarrow max_i(I[i])$, $I_{min} \leftarrow min_i(I[i])$\\
372 $amp \leftarrow \frac{I_{max}-I_{min}}{2}$\\
374 $Is \leftarrow 0$, $Ic \leftarrow 0$\\
375 \For{$i=0$ to $M-1$}{
376 $Is \leftarrow Is + I[i]\times $ lut\_sinfi[$i$]\\
377 $Ic \leftarrow Ic + I[i]\times $ lut\_cosfi[$i$]\\
380 $\theta \leftarrow -\pi$\\
381 $val_1 \leftarrow 2\times \left[ Is.\cos(\theta) + Ic.\sin(\theta) \right] - amp\times \left[ c4i.\sin(2\theta) + s4i.\cos(2\theta) \right]$\\
382 \For{$i=1-n_s$ to $n_s$}{
383 $\theta \leftarrow \frac{i.\pi}{n_s}$\\
384 $val_2 \leftarrow 2\times \left[ Is.\cos(\theta) + Ic.\sin(\theta) \right] - amp\times \left[ c4i.\sin(2\theta) + s4i.\cos(2\theta) \right]$\\
386 \lIf{$val_1 < 0$ et $val_2 >= 0$}{
387 $\theta_s \leftarrow \theta - \left[ \frac{val_2}{val_2-val_1}\times \frac{\pi}{n_s} \right]$\\
389 $val_1 \leftarrow val_2$\\
395 \subsubsection{Comparison}
397 \subsection{VHDL design paradigms}
399 \subsection{VHDL implementation}
401 \section{Experimental results}
407 \section{Conclusion and perspectives}
410 \bibliographystyle{plain}
411 \bibliography{biblio}