An Efficient Double-Filter Hardware Architecture for H.264/AVC Deblocking Filtering

In this paper, a novel hardware architecture for real-time implementation of the adaptive deblocking filtering process specified by the H.264/AVC video coding standard, is presented. The deblocking filter is a computationally and data intensive tool resulting in an increased execution time of both the encoding and decoding processes. The proposed architecture is based on a double- filter strategy that results in a significant saving in filtering cycles, memory requirements and gate count when compared with state-of-the-art approaches. The proposed architecture is implemented in synthesizable HDL at RTL level and verified with the reference software. This hardware is designed to be used as part of a complete H.264/A VC video coding system.