The improving resolutions of new video appliances continuously increase the throughput requirements of video codecs and complicate the challenges encountered during their cost-efficient design. We propose an FPGA implementation of a high-performance MPEG-4 video encoder. The fully dedicated video pipeline is realized using a systematic design approach and exploits the inherent functional parallelism of the compression algorithm. The effect of memory and algorithmic optimizations applied at the high-level are measured on the RTL description. The resulting MPEG-4 video encoder efficiently uses the FPGA blockRAMs, uses burst oriented accesses to external memory and supports real-time processing of 30 4CIF frames per second.

No abstract

No abstract

We report on the generation of combined FSK/IM modulation format by using GCSR tunable laser sources. FSK modulation, up to 100 Mbit/s, has been achieved by modulating the phase section of a GCSR laser source. We experimentally demonstrate generation of combined FSK/IM modulation at 100Mbit/s and 10 Gbit/s, respectively. We also report on successful FSK label insertion using a SOA-MZI wavelength converter.

Traditional design and test of complex multimedia systems involves a large number of test vectors and is a difficult and time-consuming task. The simulation times are prohibitively long on current desktop computers. Driving actual design scenarios and timing burst behavior which produce real-time effects is difficult to do with current simulation environments. This paper describes a rapid emulation framework for accessing multiple hardware IP blocks on an FPGA. This solution involves an abstraction of the FPGA platform by having a virtual socket layer that resides between the design and the test vehicles. A rapid prototyping platform is thus created, and its use with complex video and multimedia systems is described.