Feedback-free rate-allocation scheme for transform domain Wyner---Ziv video coding

In most existing Wyner---Ziv video coding schemes, a feedback channel (FC) is expected at the decoder in order to allocate a proper bit rate for each Wyner---Ziv frame. However, FC not only results in additional latency but also increases decoding complexity due to the several feedback-decoding iterations. Moreover, FC may be unavailable in many practical video applications. In this paper, we propose a novel feedback-free rate-allocation scheme for transform domain Wyner---Ziv video coding (TD-WZVC), which predicts the rate for each Wyner---Ziv frame at the encoder without significantly increasing the complexity of the encoder. First, a correlation estimation model is presented to characterize the relationship between the source frame and the reference frame estimated at the encoder in TD-WZVC. Then, an efficient FC-free rate-allocation algorithm is proposed and a linear model is built to avoid both overestimation and underestimation of the real rate and obtain an optimal rate-distortion performance. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is able to achieve a good encoder rate allocation while still maintaining consistent coding efficiency.