A Novel Search Area Data Reuse Method for Memory Access Optimization of Fast Search Motion Estimation

Motion estimation (ME) is a time-consuming algorithm to find a matching block in the search area for video applications, such as video compression. Motion estimation algorithm includes full search algorithm and fast search algorithm. If the width of the motion estimation algorithm search area is twice the size of the block, half of the search area for adjacent blocks overlaps. In view of this, this paper proposes a search area data reuse method for fast search motion estimation. With the proposed data reuse implementation, only the first block needs to read the data of the entire search area from the off-chip memory. The other blocks only need to read half the original search area. In this way, time of access to external memory is reduced, and running time of the algorithm is also decreased. Experimental results of diamond search show that the search area data reuse methods can reduce the running time by 40% to 60% compared with the algorithm of no use data reuse, and it can also reduce the power consumption by 62% to 73%. Compared with other methods in the literature, the proposed method also performs better on running time and power consumption.