A parallel architecture for performing mail sorting in real time

This paper describes a special-purpose embedded multiprocessor architecture developed for performing real-time multi-line optical character recognition (MLOCR). MLOCR is a computationally intensive real-time application involving pattern recognition, character image extraction, gray-scale thresholding, rotation and scaling of individual characters, and character identification. The computational complexity of the MLOCR application dictated the development of custom hardware in a parallel processing environment in order to meet the real-time system requirements. The overall system organization is described, along with the functional partitioning of algorithms onto processors, development of specific custom hardware to implement the algorithms in real time, interprocess communications, and system control.