Fast regulate motion estimation algorithm based on 9-PB search for H.264/AVC

This paper presents a fast algorithm implement the variable block size motion estimation for H.264 system. The fast algorithm is proposed based on hardware-oriented concept for regular VLSI design. We present a fast algorithm with 9-point block (9PB) concept to reduce the computational complexity. The vector is estimated with the continuous search to reduce the bandwidth of I/O memory. Also, variable block size motion estimation for 16×16, 16×8, 8×16, 8×8, 8×4, 4×8, 4×4 coding modes are computed simultaneously. Simulations show that our proposed algorithm can save 88%∼94% motion searching time under H.264 program JM while PSNR only decreases about 0.02dB in average, from various sequences testing.