Frame grabber circuit for IEEE1394 image transfer

Due to the recent increase in the quantity of data needing to be transferred, several protocols have been introduced to support high speed data communication. Amongst these protocols, IEEE1394 is particularly suitable for transferring vast amounts of data such as video and audio. In this study, we developed an IEEE1394 image transfer circuit and a frame grabber circuit. The IEEE1394 image transfer circuit transfers data from an IEEE1394 camera to the frame grabber circuit via IEEE1394. The frame grabber circuit processes the data received from the IEEE1394 interface and displays the processed data on a monitor directly without the help of a personal computer(PC). In the frame grabber circuit, an field programmable gate array(FPGA) is used to implement a variety of image processing algorithms. Therefore, the whole system, that is the IEEE1394 interface circuit and frame grabber circuit, can operate in stand-alone mode, without the need for a PC.