A new encoder rate-allocation method for distributed video coding

Abstract

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a new video coding architecture. Compared with traditional video coding schemes, DVC has a simple encoder and complex decoder, which makes it suitable for circumstances where the encoder equipments are simple but the decoder equipments are complex. Most of the existing DVC architectures use decoder rate allocation method with the help of feedback channel. According to the results of the current decoding round, the decoder informs the encoder by feedback channel whether more parity bits are needed. The use of feedback channel not only increases the system delay, but also limits the use of DVC to instances where there is no feedback channel. In this paper, we propose a novel encoder rate allocation method. First, the simple three-step motion estimation is introduced into the encoder to estimate the side information of the decoder, and then the number of parity bits the decoder needs for each bit-plane is allocated at the encoder according to the difference of the estimated side information and the current Wyner-Ziv (WZ) frame. Experiment results indicate that the accuracy of the proposed method is 5.18%–52.93% higher than that of the method proposed by Morbee.