Intelligent real-time CCD data processing system based on variable frame rate

Abstract

In order to meet the need of image shooting with CCD in unmanned aerial vehicles, a real-time high resolution CCD data processing system based on variable frame rate is designed. The system is consisted of three modules: CCD control module, data processing module and data display module. In the CCD control module, real-time flight parameters (e.g. flight height, velocity and longitude) should be received from GPS through UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) and according to the corresponding flight parameters, the variable frame rate is calculated. Based on the calculated variable frame rate, CCD external synchronization control impulse signal is generated in the control of FPGA and then CCD data is read out. In the data processing module, data segmentation is designed to extract ROI (region of interest), whose resolution is equal to valid data resolution of HDTV standard conforming to SMPTE (1080i). On one hand, Ping-pong SRAM storage controller is designed in FPGA to real-time store ROI data. On the other hand, according to the need of intelligent observing, changeable window position is designed, and a flexible area of interest is obtained. In the real-time display module, a special video encoder is used to accomplish data format conversion. Data after storage is packeted to HDTV format by creating corresponding format information in FPGA. Through inner register configuration, high definition video analog signal is implemented. The entire system has been implemented in FPGA and validated. It has been used in various real-time CCD data processing situations.