Hardware setup

A complete setup using the SDI-MIPI Video Converter would typically consist of at least 3 devices:

  • SDI Video Converter - Antmicro’s SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter, responsible for deserializing SDI data and packeting it with the MIPI CSI-2 protocol,

  • Transmitter - a device transmitting SDI video data, connected to the SDI input port of the bridge,

  • Receiver - a device receiving MIPI CSI-2 video data, connected to the MIPI CSI-2 output port of the bridge.

SDI Video Converter

The core part of this setup is the SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter.

SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter board

Figure 1 SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter board, rev. 1.0.0

Features

  • Integrated SDI adaptive cable equalizer and output loopback connector

  • Three 4-lane MIPI D-PHY transceivers at 6 Gbps per PHY exposed on two 50-pin FFC connectors

  • Ability to power devices from the 5V and 3.3V rails of the side FFC connector

  • Ability to power the board from either USB or Antmicro’s 50-pin FFC connector

  • Lattice Crosslink-NX FPGA for processing SDI and CSI streams

  • 2Gbit (128Mbx16) DDR3L DRAM memory for the FPGA to support stream processing

  • Ability to interface and program the FPGA via the side FFC I2C bus

Architecture

The video converter board consists of the SDI deserializer, Lattice Crosslink-NX FPGA, and on-board DDR3L memory. The Figure 2 visualizes an architecture and data exchange between the board components.

SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter block diagram

Figure 2 SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter block diagram

An I2C or JTAG commands must come from outside of the board in order to program the FPGA chip.

Transmitter

The transmitter is a device (typically a camera) outputting data via the SDI interface. It must be compatible with the 1080p30Hz YUV422 video format.

Several input devices have been tested with SDI to MIPI CSI-2 Video Converter, e.g:

Receiver

The receiver is a device that can receive data through the MIPI CSI-2 interface. The Software section of this documentation covers support for the Jetson Xavier NX board.

Antmicro provides sources for a Linux distribution configured for SDI Video Converter support for Jetson Xavier NX.

Last update: 2023-10-13