Universal bridge interface for DVP-compatible image sensors

In this paper, an efficient design of a digital-video-port (DVP) compatible universal bridge architecture to randomly access image pixels of a high speed image sensor is presented. Most commercially available CMOS image sensors send image data at high speed where the pixel values can only be accessed sequentially. Random access of pixels is not possible because the pixel data are sent row-by-row. On the other hand, commercial microcontrollers run at slower speed compared to the high data-rate of the image sensors and many embedded system applications need random access of pixel values. Moreover, commercial microcontrollers may not have sufficient internal memory to store a complete image of high resolution. The proposed bridge interface addresses these problems and provides a novel solution. By using the proposed bridge, the image processor or microcontroller can capture and store an image data of any resolution in the bridge’s internal memory, which is then accessed in a random fashion at any desired speed. This is particularly useful in image compression applications that use transform coding. The proposed design is modeled in VHDL and tested in FPGA to verify the functionality. The design is later implemented using CMOS 0.18 μm Artisan library cells. The synthesis results show that the bridge can support a data rate up to 254 MHz and suitable for rapid prototyping in different high-speed and low-power embedded system applications.