Quantizer design for correlation noise in distributed video coding

Same as in traditional centralized video compression systems, a quantizer plays an important role in the rate distortion performance in distributed video coding (DVC). Considering essential effect of the quantizer on reconstruction quality in DVC, we study designs of non-uniform scalar quantizer using the Lloyd-Max algorithm as well as deadzone scalar quantizer to enhance the rate-distortion performance in DVC. More specifically, in view of the inaccurate modeling of the correlation between a distributed coded frame and a reference (key) frame, we design a non uniform quantizer for the correlation noise, for reducing the reconstruction distortion. Meanwhile, we also study the deadzone quantizer design especially the stepsize of the deadzone to optimize the rate-distortion performance. The proposed simple yet effective quantization schemes on the correlation noise (i.e., residual frame) are evaluated in DVC for different video sequences in terms of rate-distortion performance.