Image Processing Card for PC Based Simulators

The recent trend in the Department of Defense Agencies is to reduce costs associated with simulation systems, while maintaining quality. Such simulation systems as the Paint the Night simulator require the use of an expensive high-end processing system toapply sensor effects to real-time simulated sensor data. This study will focus on some of the latest technologies to determine which architecture presents the best chance of meeting the following ambitious specifications.The PC card should be able tomanipulate each pixel of an over-sampled 1280 x 1024 image by means of two 10 x 10 convolutions for blurring effects and a frame add for additive noise. All operators are desired to be floating-point. A frame rate of 30 Hz is required, but a rate of 60Hz is desired. Incoming image data will be at 3 times the output resolution to ensure that no aliasing effects are introduced into the signal. The system will be capable of overlaying symbols over the graphics as desired. The processed image should beconverted into a RS-170 format (Black & White TV) for output to a monitor. Our envisioned PCI-based sensor effects card would provide the capability of high resolution, high speed, and a sensor simulation device in less expensive package then the existingconfiguration.