From neural-based object recognition toward microelectronic eyes

Engineering neural network systems are best known for their abilities to adapt to the changing characteristics of the surrounding environment by adjusting system parameter values during the learning process. Rapid advances in analog current-mode design techniques have made possible the implementation of major neural network functions in custom VLSI chips. An electrically programmable analog synapse cell with large dynamic range can be realized in a compact silicon area. New designs of the synapse cells, neurons, and analog processor are presented. A synapse cell based on Gilbert multiplier structure can perform the linear multiplication for back-propagation networks. A double differential-pair synapse cell can perform the Gaussian function for radial-basis network. The synapse cells can be biased in the strong inversion region for high-speed operation or biased in the subthreshold region for low-power operation. The voltage gain of the sigmoid-function neurons is externally adjustable which greatly facilitates the search of optimal solutions in certain networks. Various building blocks can be intelligently connected to form useful industrial applications. Efficient data communication is a key system-level design issue for large-scale networks. We also present analog neural processors based on perceptron architecture and Hopfield network for communication applications. Biologically inspired neural networks have played an important role towards the creation of powerful intelligent machines. Accuracy, limitations, and prospects of analog current-mode design of the biologically inspired vision processing chips and cellular neural network chips are key design issues

FAST IMPLEMENTATION TECHNIQUES OF MULTICHANNEL DIGITAL FILTERS FOR COLOR IMAGE PROCESSING USING MATRIX DECOMPOSITIONS

For the processing of color images, multivariable 3-input, 3-output 2-D digital filters are used, considering decomposition in the R, G and B components. Assuming that the three image components are decorrelated, three independent single-input, single-output (SISO) two-dimensional (2-D) digital filters are needed for the processing of each monochromatic image. Additional processing is needed for the correlated noise components in each chan- nel. The requirement of very fast processing dictates the use of special purpose hardware implementations. The VLSI array processors, which are special purpose, locally intercon- nected computing networks, are ideally suited for the fast implementation of digital filters, since they maximize concurrency by exploiting both parallelism and pipelining. In this paper fast implementation architectures of 3-input, 3-output 2-D multi-input digital filters for color image processing that are based on matrix decompositions are presented. The resulting structures are modular, regular, have high inherent parallelism and are easily pipelined, so that they may be implemented via VLSI array processors

Design and FPGA Implementation of CORDIC-based 8-point 1D DCT Processor

CORDIC or CO-ordinate Rotation DIgital Computer is a fast, simple, efficient and powerful algorithm used for diverse Digital Signal Processing applications. Primarily developed for real-time airborne computations, it uses a unique computing technique which is especially suitable for solving the trigonometric relationships involved in plane co-ordinate rotation and conversion from rectangular to polar form. It comprises a special serial arithmetic unit having three shift registers, three adders/subtractors, Look-Up table and special interconnections. Using a prescribed sequence of conditional additions or subtractions the CORDIC arithmetic unit can be controlled to solve either of the following equations: Y’=K (Ycos λ+ Xsin λ) X’=K (Xcos λ - Ysin λ); where K is a constant In this project: • A CORDIC-based processor for sine/cosine calculation was designed using VHDL programming in Xilinx ISE 10.1. The CORDIC module was tested for its functionality and correctness by test-bench analysis. Subsequently, FPGA implementation of the CORDIC core followed by ChipScopePro analysis of the output logic waveforms was performed. • Using this CORDIC core a DCT processor was designed to calculate the 8-point 1D DCT. The functionality and operational correctness of this processor was tested, first on the test-bench and then via ChipScopePro analysis, post FPGA implementation. The output obtained in both the cases was compared with the actual values to test for consistency and the percentage of accuracy was established. Power consumption and FPGA resource utilization were observed. The results obtained were discussed

Optimum non linear binary image restoration through linear grey-scale operations

Non-linear image processing operators give excellent results in a number of image processing tasks such as restoration and object recognition. However they are frequently excluded from use in solutions because the system designer does not wish to introduce additional hardware or algorithms and because their design can appear to be ad hoc. In practice the median filter is often used though it is rarely optimal. This paper explains how various non-linear image processing operators may be implemented on a basic linear image processing system using only convolution and thresholding operations. The paper is aimed at image processing system developers wishing to include some non-linear processing operators without introducing additional system capabilities such as extra hardware components or software toolboxes. It may also be of benefit to the interested reader wishing to learn more about non-linear operators and alternative methods of design and implementation. The non-linear tools include various components of mathematical morphology, median and weighted median operators and various order statistic filters. As well as describing novel algorithms for implementation within a linear system the paper also explains how the optimum filter parameters may be estimated for a given image processing task. This novel approach is based on the weight monotonic property and is a direct rather than iterated method

Report from the MPP Working Group to the NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications

NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) gave a select group of scientists the opportunity to test and implement their computational algorithms on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) located at Goddard Space Flight Center, beginning in late 1985. One year later, the Working Group presented its report, which addressed the following: algorithms, programming languages, architecture, programming environments, the way theory relates, and performance measured. The findings point to a number of demonstrated computational techniques for which the MPP architecture is ideally suited. For example, besides executing much faster on the MPP than on conventional computers, systolic VLSI simulation (where distances are short), lattice simulation, neural network simulation, and image problems were found to be easier to program on the MPP's architecture than on a CYBER 205 or even a VAX. The report also makes technical recommendations covering all aspects of MPP use, and recommendations concerning the future of the MPP and machines based on similar architectures, expansion of the Working Group, and study of the role of future parallel processors for space station, EOS, and the Great Observatories era

Design of a High-Speed Architecture for Stabilization of Video Captured Under Non-Uniform Lighting Conditions

Video captured in shaky conditions may lead to vibrations. A robust algorithm to immobilize the video by compensating for the vibrations from physical settings of the camera is presented in this dissertation. A very high performance hardware architecture on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is also developed for the implementation of the stabilization system. Stabilization of video sequences captured under non-uniform lighting conditions begins with a nonlinear enhancement process. This improves the visibility of the scene captured from physical sensing devices which have limited dynamic range. This physical limitation causes the saturated region of the image to shadow out the rest of the scene. It is therefore desirable to bring back a more uniform scene which eliminates the shadows to a certain extent. Stabilization of video requires the estimation of global motion parameters. By obtaining reliable background motion, the video can be spatially transformed to the reference sequence thereby eliminating the unintended motion of the camera. A reflectance-illuminance model for video enhancement is used in this research work to improve the visibility and quality of the scene. With fast color space conversion, the computational complexity is reduced to a minimum. The basic video stabilization model is formulated and configured for hardware implementation. Such a model involves evaluation of reliable features for tracking, motion estimation, and affine transformation to map the display coordinates of a stabilized sequence. The multiplications, divisions and exponentiations are replaced by simple arithmetic and logic operations using improved log-domain computations in the hardware modules. On Xilinx\u27s Virtex II 2V8000-5 FPGA platform, the prototype system consumes 59% logic slices, 30% flip-flops, 34% lookup tables, 35% embedded RAMs and two ZBT frame buffers. The system is capable of rendering 180.9 million pixels per second (mpps) and consumes approximately 30.6 watts of power at 1.5 volts. With a 1024×1024 frame, the throughput is equivalent to 172 frames per second (fps). Future work will optimize the performance-resource trade-off to meet the specific needs of the applications. It further extends the model for extraction and tracking of moving objects as our model inherently encapsulates the attributes of spatial distortion and motion prediction to reduce complexity. With these parameters to narrow down the processing range, it is possible to achieve a minimum of 20 fps on desktop computers with Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad Core CPUs and 2GB DDR2 memory without a dedicated hardware