Fast binary pyramid motion estimation

A fast binary pyramid motion estimation (FBPME) algorithm is presented. The proposed FBPME scheme is based on the representation of set of binary features in terms of multiresolution layers, XOR Boolean block matching and an N-scale tiling search scheme. Each video frame is converted into a pyramid structure of K-1 binary layers with resolution decimation plus one integer layer at the lowest resolution. At the lowest resolution layer, the N-scale tiling search is performed to select the initial motion vector candidates. Motion vector fields are gradually refined with the XOR Boolean block matching criterion and the N-scale tiling search schemes in higher binary layers. FBPME performs several thousands times faster than the conventional full search block matching scheme at the same PSNR performance and visual quality. It also dramatically reduces the bus bandwidth and on-chip memory requirement. Moreover, the hardware complexity is low due to its binary nature