Implementation of real time image processing system with FPGA and DSP

Abstract

The Real time image processing is always in high demand for many applications used in security system, remote sensing, manufacturing process and multimedia, those require to have high performance. Based on that requirement, image processing systems have been proposed in this paper using a heterogeneous platform called TMS320DM642. The platform has an FPGA chip and a DSP processor. The FPGA chip is used as a functional element for image sampling and display and the DSP processor is used for critical image processing. In this paper, firstly we discuss the proposed hardware architecture and its working principle and then some key issues related external memory interface. Finally, an image edge detection algorithm is presented to test functionality of the proposed system. The developed system can acquire live frames from camera, display images on VGA monitor or NTSC/PAL TV and execute some image processing functions like colour model conversion, pixel based operation etc. It is also proved that the developed system can meet the real time performance requirement.