An improved coeff_token variable length decoding mehod for low power design of H.264/AVC CAVLC decoder

In this paper, we propose an improved coeff_token variable-length decoding (VLD) method in the CAVLC decoder. The number of memory accesses is one of the significant issues in the applications such as DMB and videophone services, where the low-power consumption and high-speed operation are required. In order to cut down the heavy memory accesses, a new fast VLD method is developed through the careful examination of the codewords in variable-length code tables (VLCTs). The simulation results show that the proposed method achieves an approximately 60% memory access saving without video-quality degradation, compared to the existing fast coeff-token VLD method.