Side Information Generation in Distributed Video Coding

Abstract

Distributed Video Coding (DVC) coding paradigm is based largely on two theorems of Information Theory and Coding, which are Slepian-wolf theorem and Wyner-Ziv theorem that were introduced in 1973 and 1976 respectively. DVC bypasses the need of performing Motion Compensation (MC) and Motion Estimation (ME) which are largely responsible for the complex encoder in devices. DVC instead relies on exploiting the source statistics, totally/partially, at only the decoder. Wyner-Ziv coding, a particular case of DVC, which is explored in detail in this thesis. In this scenario, two correlated sources are independently encoded, while the encoded streams are decoded jointly at the single decoder exploiting the correlation between them. Although the distributed coding study dates back to 1970’s, but the practical efforts and developments in the field began only last decade. Upcoming applications (like those of video surveillance, mobile camera, wireless sensor networks) can rely on DVC, as they don’t have high computational capabilities and/or high storage capacity. Current coding paradigms, MPEG-x and H.26x standards, predicts the frame by means of Motion Compensation and Motion Estimation which leads to highly complex encoder. Whilst in WZ coding, the correlation between temporally adjacent frames is performed only at the decoder, which results in fairly low complex encoder. The main objective of the current thesis is to investigate for an improved scheme for Side Information (SI) generation in DVC framework. SI frames, available at the decoder are generated through the means of Radial Basis Function Network (RBFN) neural network. Frames are estimated from decoded key frames block-by-block. RBFN network is trained offline using training patterns from different frames collected from standard video sequences.