FIELD PROGRAMMABLE GATE ARRAY (FPGA) ACCELERATION FOR SCALE AND ORIENTATION SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION (SOSE)

A system provides descriptor-based feature matching during terrain relative navigation (TRN). A scale and orientation (SO) module acquires a source image, image and slope pixel windows, and ring mask. The SO module combines corresponding pixels from the image pixel window and the slope pixel window to generate intermediate values, accumulates the intermediate values into ring accumulators, sums the accumulated values to generate a final ring value, and determines an orientation stability measure, and final scale and orientation values. An extract descriptors (ED) module acquires the source image, the image and slope pixel windows, final scale and orientation values, sector values, and a rink mask value. The ED module identifies pixels of interest, reorients the sector values. combines corresponding pixels from the image pixel window and the slope pixel window, accumulates and normalizes the intermediate values, and generates an image feature descriptor per coordinate.