Low-power motion estimator dedicated to MPEG2 MP@ML

An implementation of a low-power motion estimator dedicated to MPEG2 MP@ML is proposed. It adopts an improved multi-resolution telescopic search algorithm with low complexity. For the coarse search procedure, a new two-stage method, in which motion track search is conducted followed by adaptive telescopic search, is used instead of the unitary conventional telescopic search. In addition, the two-stage search can be early ended in accordance with the motion situation. Simulation results show that, compared with the conventional algorithm, the new algorithm reduces the computational load to only 30% while maintains same quality of the decoded pictures. To accelerate the two procedures of coarse search and motion vector refinement, a systolic array and an array of improved tree architecture are devised. Techniques such as clock gating and operand isolation are used to reduce the power consumption of the motion estimator.