An FPGA-based design for real-time Super Resolution Reconstruction

Since several decades, the camera spatial resolution is gradually increasing with the CMOS technology evolution. The image sensors provide more and more pixels, generating new constraints for the suitable optics. As an alternative, promising solutions propose Super Resolution (SR) image reconstruction to extend the image size without modifying the sensor architecture. Convincing state-of art studies demonstrate that these methods could even be implemented in real-time. Nevertheless, artifacts can be observed in highly textured areas of the image. In this paper, we propose a Local Adaptive Spatial Super Resolution (LASSR) method to fix this limitation. A real-time texture analysis is included in a spatial super resolution scheme. The proposed local approach enables adjustments to intrinsic heterogeneity of image texture. A FPGA-based implementation of the proposed method is then presented and enables high quality 4k super resolution videos to be performed at 16 fps, from a standard 2K video flow.