Variable block size motion estimation algorithm and its hardware architecture for H.264/AVC

This paper presents a variable block size motion estimation (ME) algorithm and its hardware architectures dedicated to H.264/AVC. Proposed ME architecture can achieve real-time processing for 720/spl times/480@30Hz with search range of [-64, +63] in the horizontal and [-32, +31] in the vertical direction at integer-pel accuracy and upto 7 reference frames at the operating frequency of 54MHz.