A lightweight genetic block-matching algorithm for video coding

A lightweight genetic search algorithm (LGSA) is proposed. Different evolution schemes are investigated, such that the control overheads are largely reduced. It is also shown that the proposed LGSA can be viewed as a novel expansion of the three-step search algorithm (TSS). It can be seen from the simulation results that the performance of LGSA is very similar to that of the full search algorithm (FSA), and the computational complexity is much lower than that of FSA and other previously proposed genetic motion estimation algorithms.