A Multiprocessor System for Performing Mail Sorting in Real Time

Abstract

This paper describes a special purpose embedded multiprocessor architecture and algorithms developed for performmg real time Multi-Line Optical Character Recognition (MLOCR). MLOCR is a  computationally intensive real time application involving character image extraction, gray scale thresholding, rotation and scaling of individual characters, and character identification. The computational complexity of the algorithms implemented in the system required custom hardware in a parallel processing environment to meet the real time system requirements. The algorithms as well as the functional partitioning of the algorithms mto parallel processing subsystems are discussed.