Didactic Platform for Image Processing Experiments based on Digital Design

This paper presents the development of an educational platform, which can be used for Image Processing Experiments using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). This project aims to the development of a real embedded system by means of a set of phases of modular development and their subsequent integration into a single system, the proposal is intended for use in a semester-long course in order to give an overview of how the FPGA technology is integrated into a digital system, and expose the difficulties and challenges in the designing. The hardware description for each practice is driven in VHDL standard and implemented using an FPGA Spartan-3E-500k, embedded in a Nexys2 Kit, which represents a midrange and low-cost device. Some methodologies and hardware implementation details are presented. The system performs a comparison between MATLAB simulations and FPGA.