Steerable-Discrete-Cosine-Transform (SDCT): Hardware Implementation and Performance Analysis

• Main Authors: Riccardo Peloso, Maurizio Capra, Luigi Sole, Massimo Ruo Roch, Guido Masera, Maurizio Martina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-03-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: video coding; discrete cosine transform; directional transform; vlsi
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/5/1405

In the last years, the need for new efficient video compression methods grown rapidly as frame resolution has increased dramatically. The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) effort produced in 2013 the H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, which represents the state of the art in video coding standards. Nevertheless, in the last years, new algorithms and techniques to improve coding efficiency have been proposed. One promising approach relies on embedding direction capabilities into the transform stage. Recently, the Steerable Discrete Cosine Transform (SDCT) has been proposed to exploit directional DCT using a basis having different orientation angles. The SDCT leads to a sparser representation, which translates to improved coding efficiency. Preliminary results show that the SDCT can be embedded into the HEVC standard, providing better compression ratios. This paper presents a hardware architecture for the SDCT, which is able to work at a frequency of 188<inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi mathvariant="normal">M</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula><inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi>Hz</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula>, reaching a throughput of 3.00 GSample/s. In particular, this architecture supports 8k UltraHigh Definition (UHD) (7680 &#215; 4320) with a frame rate of 60 <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi>Hz</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula>, which is one of the best resolutions supported by HEVC.