An FPGA-based pipeline for micropolarizer array imaging

The enhancement of current camera performances, in terms of framerate, image resolution and pixel width, has direct consequences on the amount of resources needed to process video data. Stokes imaging permits to estimate polarization of light and create multiple polarization descriptors of the scene. Therefore, such video cameras need fast processing for critical applications like overseeing, defect detection or surface characterization. An FPGA hardware implementation of Stokes processing is presented here that embeds dedicated pipeline for micropolarizer array sensors. An optimized fixed-point pipeline is used to compute polarimetric images, i.e. Stokes vector, degree of polarization and angle of polarization. Simulation and experimental studies are done. The hardware design contains parallel processing, low latency and low power and could meet actual real-time and embeddable requirements for smart camera systems