Luminance scalable coding using H.264/AVC SVC extensions for mobile video applications

We propose a luminance scalable video coding scheme (LSC) that uses the scalable video coding (SVC) extension of H.264/AVC to reduce the power consumption of mobile devices. The insufficient battery life of mobile hand-held devices is the main obstacle for mobile video applications. In particular, liquid crystal displays consume a large portion of the system power. Building on previous power reduction schemes, such as dynamic backlight luminance scaling, we exploit SVC which is used to adapt a video stream to the preferences of users, different mobile capabilities, and varying network conditions. Our video coding scheme can reduce the power consumed by an LCD display by more than 20%, even though it has a lower overhead than previous schemes and does not require any modification of the decoders.