Modeling and analysis of windowed synchronous algorithms

Sliding window algorithms are fundamental parts of each image processing system. Especially those belonging to the class of static algorithms offer various possibilities for analysis and optimization. Only if this potential is exploited, a high level synthesis of such algorithms will lead to efficient implementations. Such an analysis relies on an efficient representation by a well-defined model of computation. It must abstract important properties of sliding windows as for instance the relation between input and output data as well as the required buffer space. In this paper, a corresponding static model of computation for sliding window algorithms is elaborated, called Windowed Synchronous Data Flow (WSDF). Its main focus lies on applications with two or more dimensions. Furthermore, the WSDF balance equation is derived allowing to verify bounded token accumulation during execution.