Mukul Shirvaikar and Leonardo Estevez
Texas Instruments

Digital still cameras (DSC) have been around for a few years, but only recently have technical advancements brought their cost into the reach of most consumers. The DSC market has drawn the attention of consumer electronics manufacturers, embedded system design houses, software houses, and silicon providers.

As the market gets more competitive, consumers demand platforms with differentiating features such as motion video capability, audio playback and even wireless connectivity. A myriad of such enhanced products are already in the market or slated for release over the next few quarters. The design of these systems can become very complex due to the variety of software and hardware system blocks that need to be integrated. This tutorial will briefly present how applications such as JPEG, MPEG4, MP3, and 802.11 work. It will present the issues which designers have to consider during camera product development and help them to make design choices using this analysis.