Design and FPGA implementation of a real-time processor for the HDR conversion of images and videos

In this paper a multiresolution architecture to expand the dynamic range of low dynamic range (LDR) images to 32-bit high dynamic range (HDR) counterpart is presented. The processor is capable to provide on-the-fly calculation of the edge-preserving bilateral filtering and luminance average, to images images up to full-HD images (1920×1080 pixels) using 25×9 filtering and up to 4K UHDTV images (3840×2160 pixels) using 25×5 filtering without frame buffers. To this end, a "hardware friendly" algorithm has been derived from the most effective methods presented in the literature. Additionally, the proposed design is capable of processing the input pixel in streaming order, as they come from input devices by avoiding frame buffers and eliminating external DRAM. The processor complexity can be configured with different area/speed ratios in order to meet the requirements of different FPGA platforms. Implemented on a high-end FPGA the processor achieves state-of-the art performances

Project and development of hardware accelerators for fast computing in multimedia processing

2017 - 2018The main aim of the present research work is to project and develop very large scale electronic integrated circuits, with particular attention to the ones devoted to image processing applications and the related topics. In particular, the candidate has mainly investigated four topics, detailed in the following. First, the candidate has developed a novel multiplier circuit capable of obtaining floating point (FP32) results, given as inputs an integer value from a fixed integer range and a set of fixed point (FI) values. The result has been accomplished exploiting a series of theorems and results on a number theory problem, known as Bachet’s problem, which allows the development of a new Distributed Arithmetic (DA) based on 3’s partitions. This kind of application results very fit for filtering applications working on an integer fixed input range, such in image processing applications, in which the pixels are coded on 8 bits per channel. In fact, in these applications the main problem is related to the high area and power consumption due to the presence of many Multiply and Accumulate (MAC) units, also compromising real-time requirements due to the complexity of FP32 operations. For these reasons, FI implementations are usually preferred, at the cost of lower accuracies. The results for the single multiplier and for a filter of dimensions 3x3 show respectively delay of 2.456 ns and 4.7 ns on FPGA platform and 2.18 ns and 4.426 ns on 90nm std_cell TSMC 90 nm implementation. Comparisons with state-of-the-art FP32 multipliers show a speed increase of up to 94.7% and an area reduction of 69.3% on FPGA platform. ... [edited by Author]XXXI cicl