Rate-distortion-complexity optimization for VLSI implementation of integer motion estimation in H.264/AVC encoder

In order to accommodate the wide range of applications and the corresponding platforms where the H.264/AVC standard is currently in place, one should be able to optimize the encoder´s computational complexity with a careful selection of the coding configuration parameters. Motion estimation is the most time-consuming part of the encoder which constitutes up to 75% of the computational complexity. In this paper, the optimum selection of configuration parameters, including search range, reference frame, degree of down-sampling and number of truncation bits have been analyzed for the VLSI implementation of integer motion estimation in terms of distortion-complexity performance. Furthermore, the optimum parameter sets have been presented for different video sizes and different constraints on computational power.