Quadratic ρ-domain based rate control algorithm for HEVC

In this paper, a novel quadratic ρ-domain frame layer rate control algorithm is proposed for Low Delay (LD) configuration in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). Firstly, we propose a quadratic ρ-domain rate quantization (R-Q) model to establish the relationship between bit rate and quantization parameter. Subsequently, inspired by the specialized QP determination and reference picture set (RPS) mechanism, we design a RPS based hierarchical partition structure for rate control. Based on the hierarchical partition, an efficient hierarchical bit allocation scheme is provided. Finally, the quantization parameter (QP) is calculated via the proposed R-Q model after the bit allocation to meet the target bits. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the R-D performance compared to the state-of-the-art rate control scheme for HEVC. Moreover, our proposed algorithm also provides smaller mismatch between the target bit rate and the actual bit rate.