Design of a real time digital image correlator

This thesis presents the design of a real time digital image correlator circuit The circuit accepts images in real time from two video sources, with one video source serving as a reference with which images from the second video source are compared. The proposed circuit extracts a reference window from the reference image and a horizontal band from the input image, and performs real time image cross-correlation on the two extracted portions. The resulting cross-correlation values are shifted out of the circuit as they are computed. The size of the reference window, the size of the image pairs, and the vertical offset of the reference window and input band are externally selectable. The circuit has been modeled in VHDL and simulated using the SYNOPSYS VHDL Simulator. This thesis also presents a proposed implementation of the circuit.