DIGITAL CAMERA DESIGN

AN INTERSTING EMBEDDED SYSTEM CASE STUDY

What is System ???

A system is a group of units that are joined together to work in a specific routine
and perform some fixed operation.These units could be of any nature i.e. if you are
working on an electronics system then these units will be electronic components.

What is Embedded Systems ???

An embedded system is that system which has computer hardware with software
embedded in it.It is a device which has a programmable computer but such a
computer is not general purpose computer.It may be an independent system or a
part connected with some other system.An embedded system product is controlled
by an internal microprocessor or microcontroller instead of some external control
unit.The ROM of microcontroller is burned with the program to perform specific
functions of the embedded systems.Micrcontrollers normally used to design
embedded systems are Arduino, PIC Microcontroller, Atmel Micrcontroller, 8051
Microcontroller etc.

One of the most exciting Examples of Embedded Systems is Digital Camera so

let’s have a look at its features:

A Digital camera is an example of sophisticated embedded system. It consists of a

lot of components including the DSP processors. The fig(a) shows one possible block
diagram of a digital camera.Digital camera includes various types of memories like
DRAM, memory card, flash memory with controller etc.The CPU is the main
processor is also connected with the various other processors. The host processor
just controls the various operations and the complicated operations are performed
by these task processors.

Cameras that we use today are smart and have a lot of features that were not
present in early cameras all because of embedded system used in them.A digital
camera has basically three functions, to capture image which we call data, to store
image data, and to represent this data.This feature has increased the storage
capacity and made it easy to transfer images.
Digital Camera Designer’s Perspective

Two key Tasks

• Processing images and storing in memory

§ When shutter pressed

o Image captured

o Converted to digital form by charge-coupled device (CCD)

o Compressed and archived in internal memory

• Uploading images to PC

o Digital camera attached to Pc

o Special software commands camera to transmit archived images

serially.
 fig(a): Block diagram of digital camera

• The JPEG co-processor is mainly meant to compress and decompose image into
JPEG format.

•The camera DSP processes the images taken by CCD camera after it is converted
to digital form.

• A graphics processor is also connected to do graphics processing for displaying

the images and videos from the memory either on the LCD panel through the LCD
controller interface or to the video out after video encoding.

• The IrDA interface is provided for remote controlling of the camera through the
infrared remote.

• An Ethernet interface is given for Ethernet connection. There are other

interfaces like RS232 and Bluetooth for advance communication support.
System’s requirements – what system should do
• Nonfunctional requirements
Constraints on design metrics (e.g., “should use 0.001 watt or less”)
• Functional requirements
System’s behavior (e.g., “output X should be input Y times 2”)

Initial specification is general - from marketing dept.

E.g., short document detailing market need for a low-end digital camera
that:
·0 captures and stores at least 50 low-res images and uploads to PC,
·1 costs around $100 with single medium-size IC costing less that $25,
·2 has long as possible battery life,
·3 expected sales vol. =200,000 if mkt entry < 6 mths
·4 100,000 if between 6 and 12 months,
·5 insignificant sales beyond 12 months

Nonfunctional requirements

Performance
• Must process image fast enough to be useful
 • 1 sec reasonable constraint
• Slower would be annoying
• Faster not necessary for low-end of market
• Therefore, constrained metric
Size
• Must use IC that fits in reasonably sized camera
• Constrained and optimization metric
• Constraint may be 200,000 gates, but smaller would be cheaper

Informal functional specification

• Flowchart breaks functionality down into simpler functions

• Each function’s details described in English
• Low quality image has resolution of 64 x 64
• Mapping functions to a particular processor type not done at this stage

Refined functional specification

·6 Refine informal specification into one that can actually be executed

·7 Can use C-like code to describe each function
·8 Called system-level model, prototype, or simply model
·9 Also is first implementation
Design
Determine system’s architecture
• Processors
Any combination of single-purpose
(custom or standard) or general-purpose processors
• Memories, buses
Map functionality to that architecture
• Multiple functions on one processor
• One function on one or more processors
 Implementation
• A particular architecture and mapping
• Solution space is set of all implementations
Starting point
• Low-end general-purpose processor connected to flash memory
• All functionality mapped to software running on processor
• Usually satisfies power, size, time-to-market constraints
• If timing constraint not satisfied then try:
• use single-purpose processors for time-critical functions
• rewrite functional specification