Highly concurrent architectures for recursive median filters

The authors present highly concurrent (i) array architectures (ii) stack filter architectures and (iii) sorting network architectures for recursive median filters. In order to pipeline these architectures to any level, the authors develop clustered look ahead and scattered look ahead realizations of the recursive median filters. These realizations are based on approximating the recursive median filter with a weighted recursive median filter. New array architectures and stack filter architectures are developed for weighted recursive median filters that support clustered look ahead, and new sorting network architectures for weighted recursive median filters that support scattered look ahead. These architectures can be pipelined to any level with a corresponding linear increase in the hardware complexity. In addition, these architectures can also be used to implement the larger class of weighted order statistic filters