Low bandwidth decoder framework for H.264/AVC scalable extension

In the process of scalable video coding (SVC) decoding, large external memory bandwidth is required for SVC inter-layer prediction. In this paper, a low bandwidth decoder framework is proposed for SVC. Two main decoding schemes are developed to reduce the external memory bandwidth. Macroblock-level on-the-fly padding and on-line upsampling is proposed for SVC spatial scalability decoding. This scheme reduces 36% of decoding bandwidth and 34% of processing cycles. For SVC quality scalability, a layer-interleaving decoding scheme is proposed to eliminate all inter-layer prediction bandwidth which is 41-51% of decoding bandwidth. The corresponding hardware architectures of these two decoding schemes are also provided. This low bandwidth framework can save 33-52% of DRAM access power for SVC decoding.