Technology Licensing Opportunity

HARDWARE BRIDGE FOR HIGH SPEED IMAGE SENSORS

Our Solution Most image sensors produce image data at very In this invention, the design of a novel bridge is high data rates, designers cannot easily interface proposed to interface high speed image sensors in low such sensors with low-cost since power and low speed embedded systems. most run at much slower speed By using the proposed bridge, the image or and they have limited internal memory. microcontroller can capture and store an image in the Moreover, random access of is not bridge's internal memory. Then the values can be possible because pixel values are sent row-after- accessed in random fashion through a parallel memory row by the . access interface at any required speed.

To overcome these problems, a digital-video- Advantages to our solution port (DVP) compatible bridge device, known as The commercial high-speed image sensors may be iBRIDGE, is designed to bridge any general- interfaced with advanced MCUs. However, these purpose image sensor with low-cost microcontrollers contain many additional features microcontrollers. It can be used in different (such as, six-layer advanced high-speed bus (AHB), applications such as pattern peripheral DMA controller, USB 2.0 full speed device, recognition, robotic vision, bio-medical imaging configurable FPGA interface, etc.) that may not be etc. required for simple imaging applications.

The main advantage of iBRIDGE is to provide a Besides, programming such microcontrollers and compact, ready-made and easy-to-use solution implementing the required protocols increase the that enables interfacing of commercial general- design cycle time. The purpose of the proposed bridge purpose image sensors with simple hardware is to provide a compact, ready-made and microcontrollers that are low-cost and easy-to- easy-to-use solution that enables interfacing of program, thus helps to shorten the design/ commercial general-purpose image sensors with development cycle time and facilitates rapid simple microcontrollers that are low-cost and easy-to- system prototyping of imaging application. program. Thus, the bridge hardware helps to shorten Most commercially available image sensors send the design/ development cycle time and facilitates image data at high speed and pixel values can rapid system prototyping. only be accessed sequentially. Random access of pixels is not possible because pixel values are Applications sent row-after-row. 1. Embedded Systems 2. Robotics On the other hand, commercial microcontrollers 3. Medical Imaging (such as. 8051, AYR, PIC) run at slower speed 4. Hobby Electronics compared to the high data-rate of the image sensors and many embedded system Inventors: Dr. Wahid and T. Khan Reference number: 11-011 applications need random access of pixel values. Patent status: US Patent 9088716 Also, commercial microcontrollers do not have Issued July 21, 2015 sufficient internal memory to store a complete image. For more information: Innovation Enterprise Engineering and Physical Sciences Portfolio Manager 250 – 15 Innovation [email protected] Blvd Saskatoon, SK +1 306 966 1465 S7N 2X8 Canada