3-tier dynamically adaptive power-aware motion estimator for h.264/AVC video encoding

The limitation of energy in portable communication/entertainment devices necessitates the reduction of video encoding complexity. The H.264/AVC video coding standard is one of the latest video codecs and features a complex Motion Estimation scheme that accounts for a major part of the encoder energy. We therefore present a power-aware Motion Estimator for H.264 that adapts at run time according to the available energy level. We perform a set of adaptations at different Processing Stages of Motion Estimation. Our results show that in case of CIF videos (typically used in portable devices; but our approach is equally applicable to other video resolutions too), we achieve an average energy reduction of 52 times and 27 times as compared to UMHexagonS and EPZS respectively. This energy saving comes at the cost of an average loss of only 0.39 dB in Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR: an objective quality measure) and 23% increase in area (synthesized for 90 nm technology).