High-Speed Video Transfer and Real-Time Infrared Spots Detection Based on FPGA

This paper presents a high-speed video transfer scheme and a real-time infrared spots detection algorithm designed for field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation. Rather than IEEE 1394a, two IEEE 1394b interfaces are alternatively used to ensure high-resolution image transfer in real time. In order to execute fast infrared spots detection, a parallel algorithm that processes four pixels per clock cycle is proposed. It detects infrared spots in a single pass over a frame and its implementation is only composed of combinatorial logic and registers. Furthermore, the execution time of the algorithm is independent of image content. A prototype system is implemented in an FPGA device. It is capable of transferring 1024 × 768 images smoothly at 60 fps and detecting infrared sports in a 1024 × 768 image within 1.966ms, demonstrating its superiority over the existing multi-pass algorithms and some other one-pass algorithms. Details of software and hardware architecture are discussed in this paper.