Algorithm-based efficient approaches for motion estimation systems

This research addresses algorithms for efficient motion estimation systems. With the growth of wireless video system market, such as mobile imaging, digital still and video cameras, and video sensor network, low-power consumption is increasingly desirable for embedded video systems. Motion estimation typically needs considerable computations and is the basic block for many video applications. To implement low-power video systems using embedded devices and sensors, a CMOS imager has been developed that allows lowpower computations on the focal plane. In this dissertation efficient motion estimation algorithms are presented to complement this platform.; In the first part of dissertation we propose two algorithms regarding gradient-based optical flow estimation (OFE) to reduce computational complexity with high performance. The first is a checkerboard-type filtering (CBTF) algorithm for prefiltering and spatiotemporal derivative calculations. Another one is spatially recursive OFE frameworks using recursive LS (RLS) and/or matrix refinement to reduce the computational complexity for solving linear system of derivative values of image intensity in least-squares (LS)-OFE. From simulation results, CBTF and spatially recursive OFE show improved computational efficiency compared to conventional approaches with higher or similar performance.; In the second part of dissertation we propose a new algorithm for video coding application to improve motion estimation and compensation performance in the wavelet domain. This new algorithm is for wavelet-based multi-resolution motion estimation (MRME) using temporal aliasing detection (TAD) to enhance rate-distortion (RD) performance under temporal aliasing noise. This technique gives competitive or better performance in terms of RD compared to conventional MRME and MRME with motion vector prediction through median filtering.