FPGA-based Real-time Video Quality Enhancement for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

With the rapid improvement of UAV imaging equipment in terms of image resolution and video frame rate, relying solely on software to enhance images with extremely high data volume is no longer sufficient to meet real-time requirements. Therefore, a new method of processing image signals utilizing field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware is proposed. This method involves analyzing traditional image enhancement algorithms to solve problems such as incorrect frame mapping, low contrast image enhancement, and incomplete comparison image enhancement mechanism resulting in noise during the engineering process. A limited contrast enhancement mechanism is also proposed to suppress the appearance of enhancement noise. Using the FPGA system, a hardware optimization design method is employed, including parallel processing, pipeline operation, and equivalent conversion, to achieve hardware image enhancement with extremely low resource consumption. This allows for the realization of video image enhancement with a resolution of 1920*1080 and a frame rate of 100Hz. The system has improved the overall brightness of images, target contrast, and image information restoration, and has achieved good results. This algorithm can be widely used in engineering design.