SIGNAL COMPRESSION THROUGH SPATIAL FREQUENCY-BASED MOTION ESTIMATION

The interest in low bit rate video coding has increased considerably. Despite rapid progress in storage density and digital communication sy stem performance, demand for data-transmission bandwidth and storage c apacity continue to exceed the capabilities of available technologies. The growth of data-intensive digital audio, video applications and th e increased use of bandwidth-limited media such as video conferencing and full motion video have not only sustained the need for efficient w ays to encode analog signals, but made signal compression central to d igital communication and data-storage technology. In this paper we exp lore techniques for compression of image sequences in a manner that op timizes the results for the human receiver. We propose a new motion es timator using two novel block match algorithms which are based on huma n perception. Simulations with image sequences have shown an improved bit rate while maintaining ''image quality'' when compared to conventi onal motion estimation techniques using the MAD block match criteria.