Motion Estimation Using Edge Enhanced Low-Bit Images for Lowpower MPEG Encoder

Ayuko TAKAGI
Kiyoshi NISHIKAWA
Hitoshi KIYA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E84-A    No.8    pp.1900-1908
Publication Date: 2001/08/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Digital Signal Processing)
Category: Image/Visual Signal Processing
Keyword: 
low power,  motion estimation,  MPEG,  low-bit image,  edge enhancement,  

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Summary: 
This paper propose a method for improving the image quality of motion estimation (ME) using low-bit images. By using edge-enhanced images for quantization, we can increase the accuracy of the ME and improve the image quality. It is known that using low-bit images for ME is effective for reducing power consumption but it slightly degrades image quality. The quality of the encoded image depends on the thresholds for data quantization, thus, algorithms for determining thresholds are studied. The proposed method uses linear quantization, which simply truncates the least significant bits. This method is simple without any complicated threshold calculations, and the resultant image quality is improved as much as the methods that use threshold calculations. To evaluate the effectiveness, we simulate results for image quality and estimate the power consumption using synthesis results from a VHDL model motion estimator.