Very-large-scale integration design of a low-power and cost-effective context-based adaptive variable length coding decoder for H.264/AVC portable applications

Context-based adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC) is a new and efficient entropy coding tool in H.264/AVC (advanced video coding). This study proposes a low-power and cost-effective CAVLC decoding architecture for the H.264/AVC baseline profile. Specifically, this study proposes an optimum two-layer power model for the variable length look-up table (VLUT) in the CAVLC decoder, and divides the decoding phase of the LUT into two-layer decoding to reduce power consumption. To achieve a cost-effective design, the proposed design merges common codewords to reduce the hardware cost among different LUTs in the second layer decoding. The proposed decoder is based on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 0.18 μm CMOS technology, and was completely verified on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) emulation platform. The proposed design meets the demands of the real-time CAVLC decoding and reduces power consumption by 44-48% more than previous low-power CAVLD schemes. Finally, the proposed low-power and cost-effective CAVLD design is suitable for H.264/AVC portable applications.