Integrated opto-VLSI mobile multimedia communicator

The new generation of personal interactive mobile multimedia mobile communication (M/sup 3/C) demand highly compact low power devices capable of image capture and display as well as low bit rate coding and transmission. The new design concept based upon integration of optics with that of electronics has facilitated the realisation of a novel intelligent pixel array architecture to create a real-time implementation of forward and inverse wavelet transform for image capture, in-situ processing and display. The processor consists of an array of intelligent pixel (IP) processing elements. Each element of the array incorporates three components: (a) a photodetector with associated analogue to digital converter for the conversion of the incident light; (b) embedded processor for implementation of parallel video codec algorithm; (c) a liquid crystal display for the conversion of the decoded incoming video stream to an optical output for display. To carry out the required video coding the IP array is used to emulate a mesh network of processing elements such that the inherent parallelism and interconnectivity of the architecture is fully exploited.