A Novel, Automatic Quality Control Scheme for Real Time Image Transmission

A novel scheme to compute energy on-the-fly and thereby control the quality of the image frames dynamically is presented along with its FPGA implementation. This scheme is suitable for incorporation in image compression systems such as video encoders. In this new scheme, processing is automatically stopped when the desired quality is achieved for the image being processed by using a concept called pruning. Pruning also increases the processing speed by a factor of more than two when compared to the conventional method of processing without pruning. An MPEG-2 encoder implemented using this scheme is capable of processing good quality monochrome and color images of sizes up to 1024 × 768 pixels at the rate of 42 and 28 frames per second, respectively, with a compression ratio of over 17:1. The encoder is also capable of working in the fixed pruning level mode with user programmable features.