KEYWORDS: Video, Field programmable gate arrays, Image processing, Analog electronics, Clocks, Digital imaging, Image storage, Digital electronics, Control systems, Software development
This paper describes the design of a programmable stand-alone system for real time vision pre-processing tasks. The system's architecture has been implemented and tested using an ACE16k chip and a Xilinx xc4028xl FPGA. The ACE16k chip consists basically of an array of 128x128 identical mixed-signal processing units, locally interacting, which operate in accordance with single instruction multiple data (SIMD) computing architectures and has been designed for high speed image pre-processing tasks requiring moderate accuracy levels (7 bits). The input images are acquired using the optical input capabilities of the ACE16k chip, and after being processed according to a programmed algorithm, the images are represented at real time on a TFT screen. The system is designed to store and run different algorithms and to allow changes and improvements. Its main board includes a digital core, implemented on a Xilinx 4028 Series FPGA, which comprises a custom programmable Control Unit, a digital monochrome PAL video generator and an image memory selector. Video SRAM chips are included to store and access images processed by the ACE16k. Two daughter boards hold the program SRAM and a video DAC-mixer card is used to generate composite analog video signal.
KEYWORDS: Sensors, Image processing, Analog electronics, Transistors, Digital image processing, Interfaces, Optical sensors, Computer programming, Switches, Digital signal processing
This paper describes an optical sensor interface designed for a programmable mixed-signal vision chip. This chip has been designed and manufactured in a standard 0.35μm n-well CMOS technology with one poly layer and five metal layers. It contains a digital shell for control and data interchange, and a central array of 128 × 128 identical cells, each cell corresponding to a pixel. Die size is 11.885 × 12.230mm2 and cell size is 75.7μm × 73.3μm. Each cell contains 198 transistors dedicated to functions like processing, storage, and sensing. The system is oriented to real-time, single-chip image acquisition and processing. Since each pixel performs the basic functions of sensing, processing and storage, data transferences are fully parallel (image-wide). The programmability of the processing functions enables the realization of complex image processing functions based on the sequential application of simpler operations. This paper provides a general overview of the system architecture and functionality, with special emphasis on the optical interface.
KEYWORDS: Image processing, Analog electronics, Computer programming, Digital image processing, Digital electronics, Signal processing, Sensors, Digital signal processing, Transistors, Photomasks
From a system level perspective, this paper presents a 128x128 flexible and reconfigurable Focal-Plane Analog Programmable Array Processor, which has been designed as a single chip in a 0.35μm standard digital 1P-5M CMOS technology. The core processing array has been designed to achieve high-speed of operation and large-enough accuracy (~7bit) with low power consumption. The chip includes on-chip program memory to allow for the execution of complex, sequential and/or bifurcation flow image processing algorithms. It also includes the structures and circuits needed to guarantee its embedding into conventional digital hosting systems: external data interchange and control are completely digital. The chip contains close to four million transistors, 90% of them working in analog mode. The chip features up to 330GOPs (Giga Operations per second), and uses the power supply (180GOP/Joule) and the silicon area (3.8 GOPS/mm2) efficiently, as it is able to maintain VGA processing throughputs of 100Frames/s with about 15 basic image processing tasks on each frame.
The retina is responsible of the treatment of visual information at
early stages. Visual stimuli generate patterns of activity that are transmitted through its layered structure up to the ganglion cells that interface it to the optical nerve. In this trip of micrometers, information is sustained by continuous signals that interact in excitatory and inhibitory ways. This low-level processing compresses the relevant information of the images to a manageable size.
The behavior of the more external layers of the biological retina has
been successfully modelled within the Cellular Neural Network
framework. Interactions between cells are realized on a local basic.
Each cell interacts with its nearest neighbors and every cell in the
same layer follows the same interconnection pattern. Intra- and inter-layer interactions are continuous in magnitude and time. The evolution of the network can be described by a set of coupled nonlinear differential equations. A mixed-signal VLSI implementation of focal-plane low-level image processing based upon this biological model constitutes a feasible and cost effective alternative to conventional digital processing in real-time applications. A CMOS Programmable Array Processor prototype chip has been designed and fabricated in a standard technology. It has been successfully tested, validating the proposed design techniques. The integrated system consists of a network of 2 coupled layers, containing 32×32 elementary processors, running at different time constants. Involved image processing algorithms can be programmed on this chip by tuning the appropriate interconnection weights, internally coded as analog but programmed via a digital interface. Propagative, active wave phenomena and retina-lake effects can be observed in this chip. Low-level image processing tasks for early vision applications can be developed based on these high-order dynamics.
In this paper a programmable imager with averaging capabilities will be described which is intended for averaging of different groups or sets of pixels formed by n X n kernels, n X m kernels or any group of randomly- selected pixels across the array. This imager is a 64 X 64 array which uses passive pixels with electronic shutter and anti-blooming structure that can be randomly accessed. The read-out stage includes a sole charge amplifier with programmable gain, a sample-and-hold structure and an analog buffer. This read-out structure is different from other existing imagers with variable resolution since it uses a sole charge amplifier, whereas the conventional structure employs an opamp per column plus another global opamp. this architecture allows a reduction of the fixed-pattern noise observed in standard imagers. The prototype also includes an analog to digital converter which provides the digital output of the images.
KEYWORDS: Image processing, Analog electronics, Logic, Signal processing, Binary data, Digital image processing, Prototyping, Digital signal processing, Image filtering, Digital electronics
This paper describes a full-custom mixed-signal chip which embeds distributed optical signal acquisition, digitally- programmable analog parallel processing, and distributed image memory--cache--on a common silicon substrate. The paper briefly describes the chip architecture and focus mostly on presenting experimental evidence of the chip functionality. Multiscale low-pass and high-pass filtering of gray-scale images, analog edges extraction, image segmentation, thresholded gradient detection, mathematical morphology operations, shortest path detection in a labyrinth, skeletonizing, image reconstruction, several non- linear type image processing tasks like absolute value calculation of gray-scale gradient detection and real-time motion detection in QCIF video sequences are some of the very interesting applications that have been demonstrated as available when using the prototype.
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