Low Complexity Interpolation Filters for Motion Estimation and Application to the H.264 Encoders

Techniques for image super-resolution play an important role in a plethora of applications, which include video compression and motion estimation. The detection of the fractional displacements among frames facilitates the removal of temporal redundancy and improves the video quality by 2-4 dB PSNR. However, the increased complexity of the Fractional Motion Estimation (FME) process adds a significant computational load to the encoder and sets constraints to real-time designs. Researchers have performed timing analysis for the motion estimation process and they reported that FME accounts for almost half of the entire motion estimation period, which in turn accounts for 60-90% of the total encoding time depending on the design configuration