A 1.3 megapixel FPGA-based smart camera for high dynamic range real time video

A camera is able to capture only a part of a high dynamic range scene information. The same scene can be fully perceived by the human visual system. This is true especially for real scenes where the difference in light intensity between the dark areas and bright areas is high. The imaging technique which can overcome this problem is called HDR (High Dynamic Range). It produces images from a set of multiple LDR images (Low Dynamic Range), captured with different exposure times. This technique appears as one of the most appropriate and a cheap solution to enhance the dynamic range of captured environments. We developed an FPGA-based smart camera that produces a HDR live video colour stream from three successive acquisitions. Our hardware platform is build around a standard LDR CMOS sensor and a Virtex 6 FPGA board. The hardware architecture embeds a multiple exposure control, a memory management unit, the HDR creating, and the tone mapping. Our video camera enables a real-time video at 60 frames per second for a full sensor resolution of 1, 280 × 1, 024 pixels.