The Design and Implementation of an Image Processing Framework with a Graphical Programming Interface for Low-Ended FPGAs

Image processing and computer vision algorithms are very computationally intensive and could not be implemented on low power microcontroller used in embedded and small IoT devices. Performing computation on the cloud is not practical for always-on real-time operations and deploying a high-end microcontroller or a microprocessor consume too much power and are generally too expensive to fit into these small systems. In this paper, we propose a new programming workflow using reusable hardware modules and a graphical programming interface for implementing a complete image processing system on an FPGAs which overcomes the steep learning curve of tradition FPGAs design tool. The design can be deployed onto the low-ended FPGAs in a similar price point as a mid-range microcontroller. To demonstrate our proposed framework, we have implemented a number of image transformation operations on an FPGAs development board with Lattice iCE40 Ultra Plus FPGA and a tiny camera module. Results have shown that our designs can fit in a low-ended FPGAs while performing 5.5-345x faster and consuming 2.4-4x less power compared to current state-of-the-art microcontroller used in small embedded and IoT devices.