Rate-distortion analysis of super-resolution image/video decoding

An image/video communication scenario with super-resolution (SR) decoding, where the decoded images are upsampled using SR reconstruction at the receiver side, is analyzed from a theoretical perspective. To formulate the rate-distortion performance for such cases, we propose a new numerical model that combines a frequency-domain SR model and a rate-distortion theory for lossy image compression. We considered several factors that affect the reconstruction quality, and revealed that SR decoding performs better in low bitrates. We also conducted real-image simulations and confirmed that both the numerical analysis and real-image simulations exhibit quite similar tendencies, which supports the effectiveness of our numerical model.