FPGA Implementations for Real-Time Processing of High-Frame-Rate and High-Resolution Image Streams

This paper presents FPGA implementations of two standard image preprocessing algorithms, namely image filtering and image averaging. The implementations allow processing of high-frame-rate and high-resolution image streams in real-time. The developed implementations are evaluated in terms of resource usage, power consumption, and achievable frame rates. The performance of the developed implementation of image filtering algorithm is compared with implementation provided by MATLAB’s Vision HDL Toolbox. The algorithms are evaluated on Microsemi’s Smartfusion2 Advanced Development Kit. The development board includes a SmartFusion2 M2S150 SoC FPGA. For verification, the board is connected to an industrial camera which uses the Camera Link interface. Limitations of processing image streams with FPGA platforms are discussed.