Low-Cost Intra Frame Coding Hardware using Wavelets

This paper discusses the use of a discrete wavelet transform for video intra frame coding in (mobile) video telephones. Present state-ofthe-art wavelet codecs yield high-quality still pictures. However, these codecs are generally quite complex [1][2][3], whereas our work is influenced by the need for a low-complexity and low-cost hardware solution. In the context of hardware implementation and integration with the H.263 low bitrate video standard [4], several bottlenecks are investigated, such as computational power and memory access bandwidth. Different solutions are proposed that make the discrete wavelet transform competitive with existing DCT intra frame coding schemes. An algorithm is developed that combines the Two-Ten wavelet transform with a Telenor block-based H.263 run length and variable length encoder [5]. This algorithm is a low-complexity solution that yields good results in color image compression. Keywords— wavelet transform, VLSI, image compression, video coding