Power-efficient video encoding on resource-limited systems: A game-theoretic approach

Most mobile video applications are often deployed on battery-operated devices. With limited power supply, it is a challenging issue to support video applications with high resolution due to the complex functionality and high resource requirements. Thus, power-efficient design is important in computation intensive applications especially for mobile video terminals. Previous works on power-efficient control in video encoding systems focus on the low complexity design while typically ignoring the impact of scalable design by considering various power consumption involved in the encoding process. This paper is dedicated to developing a power-scalable video encoding (PSVE) strategy for energy-limited mobile terminals. PSVE can help the video encoding terminal to adjust its power consumption budget efficiently so as to enhance the power-scalable capability in mobile video terminals. This paper first establishes game theoretical analysis to model the power consumption problem as a bargaining problem. Then, the tradeoff between encoding effect and power consumption achieved by the use of game theory. The scalable and low power video encoding system based on Nash equilibrium solution is derived through the analysis on the power consumption and encoding effect. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.

► Support video applications with high resolution is a challenging issue.
► This paper develops a power-scalable video encoding strategy for energy-limited mobile terminals.
► The power consumption problem is modeled as a bargaining problem by game theoretical analysis.
► Tradeoff between encoding effect and power consumption is achieved by the use of game theory.