Design and Implementation of Reversible Logic based RGB to Gray scale Color Space Converter

Abstract

Color space conversion is an age old technique used to achieve ease in processing, feature extraction, compression and storage of image and video data. One such color space conversion is RGB to gray scale conversion. Gray scale representation of images aids in reducing storage space and increasing speed of operation. This paper presents a color space conversion scheme using reversible logic gates. An RGB color space to gray scale color space conversion using color channel averaging method and color space desaturation method is implemented in this paper. Reversible logic/computations have emerged as a major alternative to decrease the power dissipation in digital circuits. Reversible sub modules like 8-bit adder, comparator, shifter etc are used to implement the color space conversion. The implementation of reversible logic circuits was done and the functionality verification was done on Kintex 7 FPGA platform. The results are projected in terms of gate count, ancilla input, garbage output and quantum cost for reversible implementation and in terms of hardware utilization and power for FPGA. The proposed reversible circuit complies with the color conversion standards and can find application in any low power image and video processing applications.