Efficient parallel implementation of real-time airborne target tracking system on heterogeneous multi-core SoC

In this paper, we propose a real-time embedded video target tracking algorithm for use with real-world airborne video. The proposed system is designed to detect and track multiple targets from a moving camera in complicated motion scenarios such as occlusion, closely spaced targets passing in opposite directions, move-stop-move, etc. In our previous work, we developed a robust motion-based detection and tracking system, which achieved real-time performance on a desktop computer. In this paper, we extend our work to real-time implementation on a Texas Instruments OMAP 3730 ARM + DSP embedded processor by replacing the previous sequential motion estimation and tracking processes with a parallel implementation. To achieve real-time performance on the heterogeneous-core ARM + DSP OMAP platform, the C64x+ DSP core is utilized as a motion estimation preprocessing unit for target detection. Following the DSP-based motion estimation step, the descriptors of potential targets are passed to the general-purpose ARM Cortex A8 for further processing. Simultaneously, the DSP begins preprocessing the next frame. By maximizing the parallel computational capability of the DSP, and operating the DSP and ARM asynchronously, we reduce the average processing time for each video frame by up to 60% as compared to an ARM-only approach.