Hardware-software co-implementation of a H.263 video codec

Author

Jang, S.K. ; Kim, S.-D. ; Lee, J. ; Choi, G.Y. ; Ra, J.B.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Korea Adv. Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Seoul, South Korea

Volume

46

Issue

1

fYear

2000

fDate

2/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

191

Lastpage

200

Abstract

An H.263 video codec is implemented by adopting the concept of hardware and software co-design. Each module of the codec is investigated to find which approach between hardware and software is better to achieve real-time processing speed as well as flexibility. The hardware portion includes motion-related engines, such as motion estimation and compensation, and a memory control part. The remaining portion of the H.263 video codec is implemented in software using a RISC processor. This paper also introduces efficient design methods for hardware and software modules. In hardware, an area-efficient architecture for the motion estimator of a multi-resolution block matching algorithm using multiple candidates and spatial correlation in motion vector fields (MRMCS), is suggested to reduce the chip size. Software optimization techniques are also explored by using the statistics of transformed coefficients and the minimum sum of absolute difference (SAD) obtained from the motion estimator

Keywords

code standards; discrete cosine transforms; hardware-software codesign; motion compensation; motion estimation; reduced instruction set computing; telecommunication standards; transform coding; video codecs; video coding; DCT; H.263 video codec; IDCT; RISC processor; area-efficient architecture; chip size reduction; efficient design methods; hardware module; hardware-software co-implementation; memory control; minimum sum of absolute difference; motion compensation; motion estimation; motion vector fields; motion-related engines; multi-resolution block matching algorithm; multiple candidates; real-time processing speed; software module; software optimization; spatial correlation; transformed coefficient statistics; Application software; Circuits; Engines; Random access memory; Reduced instruction set computing; SDRAM; Statistics; Video codecs;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0098-3063

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/30.826398

Filename

826398