Implementation of a stand-alone color image transfer circuit using the USB 2.0 interface

The USB (universal serial bus) has become one of the most generally used peripheral interfaces due to its many advantages, including, easy connection to the PC, stability and fast data rate. Thus, it is widely used for sending and receiving large amounts of data between a peripheral device and a PC. In this paper, we implement a stand-alone color image transfer circuit using the USB 2.0 interface and verify its performance in a PC environment. For the acquisition of color image data and image processing, this circuit was designed based on an FPGA (field programmable gate array). Using this circuit, the processed image information can easily be transferred to the PC through the USB interface. This circuit can receive and process color image data from a camera by itself, without a PC. Since this circuit is based on an FPGA, we can apply the diverse image processing algorithm to it, thus making it possible to transfer processed image data at high speed through the USB interface.