A novel hexagon-based search algorithm for fast block motion estimation

In block motion estimation, search patterns with different shape or size have a very important impact on search speed and distortion performance. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm using a hexagon-based search (HEXBS) pattern for fast block motion estimation. The proposed HEXBS algorithm may find any motion vector with fewer search points than the diamond search (DS) algorithm. The speedup gain of the HEXBS method over the DS algorithm is more striking for finding large motion vectors. Experimental results substantially justify the fastest performance of the HEXBS algorithm compared with several other popular fast algorithms.