Optimal reconstruction for a HEVC backward compatible distributed scalable video codec

In a landscape of heterogeneous networks, terminals and usage environments, a low encoding complexity scalable video coding engine is required for many emerging applications such as wireless video surveillance, visual sensor networks and remote space transmission. To fulfil this need, a distributed scalable video coding (DSVC) framework has been developed combining the predictive and distributed coding paradigms. The DSVC framework provides High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) backward compatibility at the base layer (BL) and adopts a distributed coding approach for the enhancement layers (ELs). In DSVC, the decoder reconstruction plays a key role as it strongly impacts the EL decoded frame quality and, thus, the final DSVC compression efficiency. In this context, this paper proposes a statistically inspired decoder reconstruction solution for the EL coded information based on the so-called side information residue and its correlation with the encoder EL residue. Experimental results confirm that significant RD performance gains can be achieved with the proposed statistical reconstruction technique, notably up to 11.28% BD-Rate savings regarding the most relevant benchmark.