An adaptive search length algorithm for block matching motion estimation

This paper presents a new fast search algorithm for block matching motion estimation called the adaptive search length (ASL) algorithm. The ASL algorithm adaptively varies the number of positions searched for each block while still maintaining control of the average number of searches per block for each frame. Experimental results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of decoded sequences which were coded using the ASL algorithm is within 0.25 dB of the PSNR of decoded sequences which were coded using the full search block matching algorithm. It is also shown that the ASL algorithm requires only 10% of the computations required by the full search algorithm to achieve this level of decoded image quality.