FPGA Implementation of Real Time Digital Video Super Resolution for Infrared Cameras

Abstract

At present, the quality of image taken from infrared cameras is low compared to the other cameras because of manufacturing technology. So, resolution enhancement processes are becoming more important for these cameras. Super resolution is a good approach to solve this resolution problem. In general, the systems that infrared cameras used require video processing to perform in real time. So, a suitable approach should be selected and implemented to work in real time. The computational load and processing time are big issues in this case. FPGAs are proven to be suitable hardware devices for these types of works.

Super resolution involves two parts as global motion estimation and high resolution image reconstruction. In this study, one suitable algorithm, namely as PM, for global motion estimation in the literature is selected to be implemented in real time. On the other hand, for high resolution image reconstruction part, FPGA structures of some well known algorithms in the literature, namely as POCS, MLE, MAP and LMS are proposed and their performance, resource requirements and timing considerations are discussed. Most efficient one is selected and implemented in FPGA.