Hardware implementation for entropy coding and byte stream packing engine in H.264/AVC

Entropy coding and data packing are the major phases in video coding. The new video coding standard, H.264 Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC), has adopted Exp-Golomb and Context-Adaptive coding methods to increase data compression ratio. In this paper, we propose hardware architecture of entropy encoding and byte stream data packing engines for the H.264/AVC. Our entropy coding engine, that contains Exp-Golomb and Context-Adaptive Variable Length Coding (CAVLC), supports baseline and main profile of the standard. The proposed architecture is implemented using 180nm technology from AMS. The design consumes only 1.56mW at the operating frequency of 100MHz.