Low-power video decoding for mobile multimedia applications

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel low-power video decoding scheme. In the encoded video bitstream, there are quite a large number of non-coded blocks. When the number of the non-coded blocks in a frame is known at the start of frame decoding, the workload of the video decoding can be estimated. Consequently, the supply voltage of VLSI circuits can be lowered, and the power consumption can be reduced. In the proposed scheme, the encoder counts the number of non-coded blocks and stores this information in the frame header of the bitstream. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces the power consumption to about 1/20.