Research Issues in Using Reconfigurable Computing to Accelerate Infrared Simulation

The fastest published infrared (IR) scene simulation called IMIRST by BAE Systems takes 32 minutes to construct a single 352 x 352 IR scene using a Pentium 4 (2.8GHz) dual core processor. In defence and homeland security, IR scene simulators are designed to test infrared missile approach warning systems (MAWS). A typical MAWS requires input scenes at the rate of over 50 scenes per second to effectively run key IR search and track algorithms. Current IR scene simulations fall well short in meeting this requirement. Advanced computing based on programmable logic provides a platform for parallel computing with complete freedom of choice about the granularity and structure of the parallel algorithm. In this paper we identify the key computationally intensive infrared algorithms and present a novel reconfigurable computing platform to accelerate infrared simulation.