Efficient side information generation using assistant pixels for distributed video coding

A side information generation method using assistant pixels is proposed for distributed video coding (DVC) in this work. To generate higher quality side information frames and improve the rate-distortion (R-D) performance of a DVC system, we propose transmitting assistant pixels, which help to improve the motion estimation accuracy of the decoder at the cost of an overhead bit-rate. Also, we develop a mode decision scheme, which determines the interpolation mode for each block by combining forward and backward motion vectors. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides better R-D performance than the state-of-the-art DVC algorithm.