Hardware-aware motion estimation search algorithm development for high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard

This work presents a hardware-aware search algorithm for HEVC motion estimation. Implications of several decisions in search algorithm are considered with respect to their hardware implementation costs (in terms of area and bandwidth). Proposed algorithm provides 3X logic area in integer motion estimation, 16% on-chip reference buffer area and 47X maximum off-chip bandwidth savings when compared to HM-3.0 fast search algorithm.