Unidirectional Distributed Video Coding for Low Cost Video Encoding

Distributed video coding (DVC) is an emerging video coding approach in the new era, particularly attractive due to its flexibility to introduce very simple encoder structures. This feature could be very effectively utilized in the design of low cost video cameras. However, the DVC architecture commonly discussed in research literature has a fundamental drawback of involving a feedback channel between the encoder and the decoder, which restrains itself from being used in video storage based applications. In this paper, we discuss a solution to the above problem in DVC, with a novel unidirectional architecture. In the proposed design, the feedback channel is suppressed and the encoded (compressed) bit stream can be transferred onto storage media for offline processing. The proposed decoder uses the spatial and temporal properties of the video sequence to refine the side information for iterative decoding, with the repeated use of same parity bit stream. The simulation results depict a significantly improved performance over other conventional video coding techniques proposed for use in low to middle end video equipments, while involving a very low encoder complexity.