• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.85-92
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• 1998

The block matching algorithm is the most popular motion estimation method in image sequence coding. In this paper, we propose a VLSI architecture. for implementing a recently proposed fast bolck matching algorith, which uses spatial correlation of motion vectors and hierarchical searching scheme. The proposed architecture consists of a basic searching unit based on a systolic array and two shift register arrays. And it covers a search range of -32~ +31. By using the basic searching unit repeatedly, it reduces the number of gatyes for implementation. For basic searching unit implementation, a proper systolic array can be selected among various conventional ones by trading-off between speed and hardware cost. In this paper, a structure is selected as the basic searching unit so that the hardware cost can be minimized. The proposed overall architecture is fast enough for low bit-rate applications (frame size of $352{\times}288$, 3Oframes/sec) and can be implemented by less than 20,000 gates. Moreover, by simply modifying the basic searching unit, the architecture can be used for the higher bit-rate application of the frame size of $720{\times}480$ and 30 frames/sec.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.1C
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• pp.9-15
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• 2007

We propose the fast full search algorithm that reduces the computation of the block matching algorithm which is used for motion estimation of the video coding. Since the conventional spiral search method starts searching at the center of the search window and then moves search point to estimate the motion vector pixel by pixel, it is good for the slow motion pictures. However the proposed method is good for the fast and slow motion because it estimates the motion in the new search order after partitioning the search window. Also, when finding the motion vector, this paper presents the method that reduces the complexity by computing the matching error in the order which is determined by local image complexity. The proposed algorithm reduces the computation up to 99% for block matching error compared with the conventional spiral full search algorithm without any loss of image quality.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.43 no.4 s.310
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• pp.55-65
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• 2006

Most of fast block motion estimation algorithms reported so far in literatures aim to reduce the computation in terms of the number of search points, thus do not fit well with multimedia processors due to their irregular data flow. For multimedia processors, proper reuse of data is more important than reducing number of absolute difference operations because the execution cycle performance strongly depends on the number of off-chip memory access. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a Hexagon-shape line search (HEXSLS) algorithm using line search pattern which can increase data reuse from on-chip local buffer, and check sub-sampling points in line search pattern to reduce unnecessary SAD operation. Our experimental results show that the prediction error (MAE) performance of the proposed HEXSLS is similar to that of the full search block matching algorithm (FSBMA), while compared with the hexagon-based search (HEXBS), the HEXSLS outperforms. Also the proposed HEXSLS requires much lesser off-chip memory access than the conventional fast motion estimation algorithm such as the hexagon-based search (HEXBS) and the predictive line search (PLS). As a result, the proposed HEXSLS algorithm requires smaller number of execution cycles on media processor.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.27 no.11
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• pp.1115-1122
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• 2000

기존의 블록 정합 알고리즘인 FS(Full Search) 알고리즘은 정확한 움직임 벡터를 구할 수 있으나 요구되는 계산량이 많다. 반면에 국부 탐색을 하는 고속 블록 정합 알고리즘은 FS보다 빠른 탐색을 할 수 있으나 FS 보다 정합 오차가 크다. 본 연구는 전역탐색을 하는 유전자 알고리즘에 빠른 탐색을 하는 블록 정합 알고리즘인 NTSS(New Three Ste Search)알고리즘을 제안한다. 제안한 방법에서 각 염색체는 움직임 벡터를 표현하며 초기 염색체는 탐색 공간의 중심 탐색점 가까이에 고정적으로 발생시키고 각 염색체는 MSE(Mean Square Error)값으로 평가된다. 평가된 염색체 중 작은 MSE값을 가지는 염색체가 NTSS의 탐색점 수만큼 다음 세대의 탐색점으로 선택된다. 선택된 염색체는 세대를 거치면서 돌연변이 연산과 교배연산이 행해지고 이 때 돌연변이 연산의 크기는 NTSS의 탐색 단계 크기가 된다. 제안한 세대 수 만큼 반복 후 최소의 MSE 값을 가지는 유전자가 해당 블록의 움직임 벡터가 된다. 시뮬레이션 결과 제안한 방법을 가장 우수한 성능을 가지는 FS와 유사한 MSE 값을 얻을 수 있었고 동시에 FS에서 요구되는 계산량에 비해 많은 계산량을 줄일 수 있었다.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.55-62
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• 2001

In this paper, we propose a new adaptative pruning algorithm which effectively reduces the search space during the recognition process. As maximum probabilities between neighbor frames are highly interrelated, an efficient pruning threshold value can be obtained from the maximum probabilities of previous frames. The main idea is to update threshold at the present frame by a combination of previous maximum probability and hypotheses probabilities. As present threshold is obtained in on-going recognition process, the algorithm does not need any pre-experiments to find threshold values even when recognition tasks are changed. In addition, the adaptively selected threshold allows an improvement of recognition speed under different environments. The proposed algorithm has been applied to a Korean Address recognition system. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the search space of average 14.4% and 9.14% respectively while preserving the recognition accuracy, compared to the previous method of using fixed pruning threshold values and variable pruning threshold values.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.966-974
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• 1999

완전 탐색 블록 정합 알고리즘(FBMA)은 다양한 움직임 추정 알고리즘 중 최상의 움직임 추정을 할 수 있으나, 방대한 계산량이 실시간 처리의 적용에 장애 요소이다. 본 논문에서는 완전 탐색 블록 정합 알고리즘에 비해 더 낮은 계산량과 유사한 화질을 가지는 새로운 고속 움직임 추정 알고리즘을 제안한다. 제안한 방법에서는 공간적인 상관성을 이용함으로써 적절한 탐색 영역의 크기를 예측할 수 있다. 현재 블록의 움직임 추정을 위하여 이웃 블록이 가지고 있는 움직임과 탐색 영역의 크기를 이용하여 현재 블록의 탐색 영역을 적응적으로 변화시키는 방법이다. 이 예측값으로 현재 블록의 탐색 영역 크기를 결정한 후, FBMA와 같이 이 영역 안의 모든 화소점들에 대하여 현재 블록을 정합하여 움직임 벡터를 추정한다. 컴퓨터 모의 실험 결과 계산량 측면에서 제안 방법이 완전 탐색 블록 정합 알고리즘보다 50%정도 감소하였으며, PSNR 측면에서는 0.08dB에서 1.29dB 정도 감소하는 좋은 결과를 얻었다.Abstract Full search block-matching algorithm (FBMA) was shown to be able to produce the best motion compensated images among various motion estimation algorithms. However, huge computational load inhibits its applicability in real applications. A new motion estimation algorithm with lower computational complexity and good image quality when compared to the FBMA will be presented in this paper. In the proposed method, The appropriate search area can be predicted by using the temporal correlation between neighbouring blocks. For motion estimation of the current block, it is the method changing adjustably search area of current block by using motion and search area size of the neighbouring block. After deciding search area size of the current block with this predicted value, we estimate motion vector that matching current block like the FBMA for every pixel in this area. By the computer simulation the computation amount of the proposed method can be greatly decreased about 50% than that of the FBMA and the good result of the PSNR can be attained.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.338-347
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• 2005

In this paper, a decimation-in-time search direction algorithm for displacement prediction of moving object is proposed. The initialization of the proposed algorithm for moving direction prediction is performed by detecting moving objects at sequential frames and by obtaining a moving angle and a moving distance. A moving direction of the moving object at current frame is obtained by applying the decimation-in-time search direction mask. The decimation-in-tine search direction mask is that the moving object is detected by thinning out frames among the sequential frames, and the moving direction of the moving object is predicted by the search mask which is decided by obtaining the moving angle of the moving object in the 8 directions. to examine the propriety of the proposed algorithm, velocities of a driving car are measured and tracked, and to evaluate the efficiency, the proposed algorithm is compared to the full search algorithm. The evaluated results show that the number of displacement search times is reduced up to 91.8$\%$ on the average in the proposed algorithm, and the processing time of the tracking is 32.1ms on the average.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.146-153
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• 2008

Due to the extremely short pulse in the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology, the accurate synchronization acquisition method is very important for both high data-rate WPAN and low data-rate WPAN. In this paper, we propose the synchronization acquisition algorithm based on two-step signal search method to acquire the synchronization in the UWB multi-path channel. At the first step, the search window is divided by two and the window that has higher power is chosen as a next search window. This operation is repeated until the measure power of the search window is smaller than the threshold value. At the second step, we employ Linear Search algorithm to the search window obtained at the first step for fine search. The proposed algorithm is proved that the synchronization acquisition is faster than the parallel search algorithm and it shows good performance in environment of the SNR extreme changes by the simulation.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.30 no.8C
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• pp.742-753
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose a rapid and reliable signal acquisition scheme for UWB (Ultra Wide Band) systems in typical indoor wireless channels. The proposed scheme is a two-step search with different thresholds and search window applied to a single correlator, where each step utilizes the single-dwell search with the bit reversal. Simulation results in IEEE 802. I5 Task Group .3a UWB indoor wireless channel show that the proposed scheme for the LHWB signals can achieve significant reduction of the required mean acquisition time as compared to the conventional single-dwell bit reversal search and double-dwell bit reversal search with more complex structure employing two correlators for various threshold levels. In addition, it is also observed that the proposed scheme can achieve much faster and reliable signal acquisition in noisy environments.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.31 no.12C
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• pp.1232-1239
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• 2006

In video standards such as MPEG-1/2/4 and H.264/AVC, motion estimation / compensation(ME/MC) process causes the most encoding complexity of video encoder. The full search method, which is used in general video codecs, exhausts much encoding time because it compares current macroblock with those at all positions within search window for searching a matched block. For the alleviation of this problem, the fast search methods such as TSS, NTSS, DS and HEXBS are exploited at first. Thereafter, DS based MVFAST, PMVFAST, MAS and FAME, which utilize temporal or spacial correlation characteristics of motion vectors, are developed. But there remain the problems of image quality degradation and algorithm complexity increase. In this thesis, the proposed algorithm maximizes search speed and minimizes the degradation of image quality by determining initial search point correctly and using simple one-dimension search patterns considering motion characteristics of each frame.