A current-mode 64 × 1 programmable gabor filter for early vision systems

This paper presents a current-mode 64×1 early vision chip, including integrated photodiodes and a programmable "perceptual engine", which can implement various perceptual algorithms, such as Gabor filters. The proposed chip can be used for early vision tasks as edge detection, texture analysis, depth estimation and motion analysis. The perceptual engine exploits the properties of MOS transistors to achieve widely programmable coefficients for the distributed lattice network which implements the perceptual operators. The 8.9 × 1.8 mm
²
chip, fabricated in a conventional 0.8 µm CMOS process, consumes 56 mW from a 5 V supply.