Motion estimation for video compression using Kalman filtering

Motion estimation plays an important role for the compression of video signals. This paper presents a new block-based motion estimation method using Kalman filtering. The new method utilizes the predicted motion and measured motion to obtain an optimal estimate of motion vector. The autoregressive models are employed to fit the motion correlation between neighboring blocks and then achieve predicted motion information. The measured motion information is obtained by the conventional block-based fast search schemes. Several algorithms based on either one- or two dimensional models using either nonadaptive or adaptive Kalman filters are developed. The analysis of computational complexity and the simulation results indicate that the proposed method achieves significant savings on computation along with smoother motion vector fields and similar picture quality, when compared to the conventional full search algorithm.