Design and Implementation of Real-time Sobel Edge Detection on FPGA for Mobile Device Applications

Abstract

In the image and video processing field of mobile devices, edge detection is a fundamental technique for image segmentation, feature extraction and object tracking. Due to its high computational time in software implementation, we need to find a more efficient hardware approach to improve edge detection performance. With the development of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology, the real-time parallel processing of huge video data stream using FPGA can be implemented because of FPGA reconfigurable and dedicated structure. In this paper, we present a FPGA-based implementation of edge detection technique for real-time pattern recognition applications and parallel processing. We propose a unique structure of Sobel Edge Detection on FPGA, which can significantly reduce the processing delay and improve the processing performance. The design is proved to be effective for real-time edge detection.