Distributed video coding for wireless video sensor networks: a review of the state-of-the-art architectures

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a relatively new video coding architecture originated from two fundamental theorems namely, Slepian–Wolf and Wyner–Ziv. Recent research developments have made DVC attractive for applications in the emerging domain of wireless video sensor networks (WVSNs). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art DVC architectures with a focus on understanding their opportunities and gaps in addressing the operational requirements and application needs of WVSNs

Intra-WZ quantization mismatch in distributed video coding

During the past decade, Distributed Video Coding (DVC) has emerged as a new video coding paradigm, shifting the complexity from the encoder-to the decoder-side. This paper addresses a problem of current DVC architectures that has not been studied in the literature so far, that is, the mismatch between the intra and Wyner-Ziv (WZ) quantization processes. Due to this mismatch, WZ rate is spent even for spatial regions that are accurately approximated by the side-information. As a solution, this paper proposes side-information generation using selective unidirectional motion compensation from temporally adjacent WZ frames. Experimental results show that the proposed approach yields promising WZ rate gains of up to 7% relative to the conventional method

In-situ Analysis of Laminated Composite Materials by X-ray Micro-Computed Tomography and Digital Volume Correlation

The complex mechanical behaviour of composite materials, due to internal heterogeneity and multi-layered composition impose deeper studies. This paper presents an experimental investigation technique to perform volume kinematic measurements in composite materials. The association of X-ray micro-computed tomography acquisitions and Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) technique allows the measurement of displacements and deformations in the whole volume of composite specimen. To elaborate the latter, composite fibres and epoxy resin are associated with metallic particles to create contrast during X-ray acquisition. A specific in situ loading device is presented for three-point bending tests, which enables the visualization of transverse shear effects in composite structures

Joint successive correlation estimation and side information refinement in distributed video coding

This paper presents a novel hash-based distributed video coding (DVC) scheme that combines an accurate online correlation channel estimation (CCE) algorithm with an efficient side information refinement strategy, delivering state-of-the-art compression performance. The proposed DVC scheme applies layered bit-plane Wyner-Ziv coding and successively refines the CCE bit-plane-per-bit-plane during decoding. In addition, the side information is successively refined upon decoding of distinct refinement levels, grouping specific frequency bands of the discrete cosine transform. The proposed system not only outperforms the benchmark in DVC but several state-of-the-art side information refinement techniques and CCE methods as well

Flexible distribution of complexity by hybrid predictive-distributed video coding

There is currently limited flexibility for distributing complexity in a video coding system. While rate-distortion-complexity (RDC) optimization techniques have been proposed for conventional predictive video coding with encoder-side motion estimation, they fail to offer true flexible distribution of complexity between encoder and decoder since the encoder is assumed to have always more computational resources available than the decoder. On the other hand, distributed video coding solutions with decoder-side motion estimation have been proposed, but hardly any RDC optimized systems have been developed. To offer more flexibility for video applications involving multi-tasking or battery-constrained devices, in this paper, we propose a codec combining predictive video coding concepts and techniques from distributed video coding and show the flexibility of this method in distributing complexity. We propose several modes to code frames, and provide complexity analysis illustrating encoder and decoder computational complexity for each mode. Rate distortion results for each mode indicate that the coding efficiency is similar. We describe a method to choose which mode to use for coding each inter frame, taking into account encoder and decoder complexity constraints, and illustrate how complexity is distributed more flexibly

Side information exploitation, quality control and low complexity implementation for distributed video coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a new video coding methodology that shifts the highly complex motion search components from the encoder to the decoder, such a video coder would have a great advantage in encoding speed and it is still able to achieve similar rate-distortion performance as the conventional coding solutions. Applications include wireless video sensor networks, mobile video cameras and wireless video surveillance, etc. Although many progresses have been made in DVC over the past ten years, there is still a gap in RD performance between conventional video coding solutions and DVC. The latest development of DVC is still far from standardization and practical use. The key problems remain in the areas such as accurate and efficient side information generation and refinement, quality control between Wyner-Ziv frames and key frames, correlation noise modelling and decoder complexity, etc. Under this context, this thesis proposes solutions to improve the state-of-the-art side information refinement schemes, enable consistent quality control over decoded frames during coding process and implement highly efficient DVC codec. This thesis investigates the impact of reference frames on side information generation and reveals that reference frames have the potential to be better side information than the extensively used interpolated frames. Based on this investigation, we also propose a motion range prediction (MRP) method to exploit reference frames and precisely guide the statistical motion learning process. Extensive simulation results show that choosing reference frames as SI performs competitively, and sometimes even better than interpolated frames. Furthermore, the proposed MRP method is shown to significantly reduce the decoding complexity without degrading any RD performance. To minimize the block artifacts and achieve consistent improvement in both subjective and objective quality of side information, we propose a novel side information synthesis framework working on pixel granularity. We synthesize the SI at pixel level to minimize the block artifacts and adaptively change the correlation noise model according to the new SI. Furthermore, we have fully implemented a state-of-the-art DVC decoder with the proposed framework using serial and parallel processing technologies to identify bottlenecks and areas to further reduce the decoding complexity, which is another major challenge for future practical DVC system deployments. The performance is evaluated based on the latest transform domain DVC codec and compared with different standard codecs. Extensive experimental results show substantial and consistent rate-distortion gains over standard video codecs and significant speedup over serial implementation. In order to bring the state-of-the-art DVC one step closer to practical use, we address the problem of distortion variation introduced by typical rate control algorithms, especially in a variable bit rate environment. Simulation results show that the proposed quality control algorithm is capable to meet user defined target distortion and maintain a rather small variation for sequence with slow motion and performs similar to fixed quantization for fast motion sequence at the cost of some RD performance. Finally, we propose the first implementation of a distributed video encoder on a Texas Instruments TMS320DM6437 digital signal processor. The WZ encoder is efficiently implemented, using rate adaptive low-density-parity-check accumulative (LDPCA) codes, exploiting the hardware features and optimization techniques to improve the overall performance. Implementation results show that the WZ encoder is able to encode at 134M instruction cycles per QCIF frame on a TMS320DM6437 DSP running at 700MHz. This results in encoder speed 29 times faster than non-optimized encoder implementation. We also implemented a highly efficient DVC decoder using both serial and parallel technology based on a PC-HPC (high performance cluster) architecture, where the encoder is running in a general purpose PC and the decoder is running in a multicore HPC. The experimental results show that the parallelized decoder can achieve about 10 times speedup under various bit-rates and GOP sizes compared to the serial implementation and significant RD gains with regards to the state-of-the-art DISCOVER codec