Ultra High Definition Research Articles

Low Latency UHD Adaptive Video Bitrate Streaming Based on HEVC Encoder Configurations and Http2 Protocol

Applying 4K, (Ultra HD) Real-time video streaming via the internet network, with low bitrate and low latency, is the challenge this paper addresses. Compression technology and transfer links are the important elements that influence video quality. So, to deliver video over the internet or another fixed capacity medium, it is essential to compress the video to more controllable bitrates (customarily in the 1-20 Mbps range). In this study, the video quality is examined using the H.265/HEVC compression standard, and the relationship between quality of video and bitrate flow is investigated using various constant rate factors, GOP patterns, quantization parameters, RC-lookahead, and other types of video motion sequences. The ultra-high-definition video source is used, down sampled and encoded at multiple resolutions of (3480x2160), (1920x1080), (1280x720), (704x576), (352x288), and (176x144). To determine the best H265 feature configuration for each resolution experiments were conducted that resulted in a PSNR of 36 dB at the specified bitrate. The resolution is selected by delivery (encoder resource) based on the end-user application. While video streaming adapted to the available bandwidth is achieved via embedding a controller with MPEG DASH protocol at the client-side. Video streaming Adaptation methods allow the delivery of content that is encoded at different representations of video quality and bitrate and then dividing each representation into chunks of time. Through this paper, we propose to utilize HTTP/2 as a protocol to achieve low latency video streaming focusing on live streaming video avoiding the problem of HTTP/1.

On the Immersive Properties of High Dynamic Range Video

This paper presents the results from two studies which used a dual-task methodology to measure an audience's experience of immersion while watching video under typical television viewing conditions. Immersion was measured while participants watched either a high dynamic range, wide color gamut video or a standard dynamic range, standard color gamut video, in high definition or ultra-high definition. Other video parameters were carefully measured and controlled. The study found that high dynamic range, wide color gamut video is significantly more immersive than standard dynamic range, standard color gamut video in the chosen configuration. However, there was no evidence of significant differences in immersion between high-definition and ultra-high-definition resolutions.

Latest Performance Improvement Strategies and Techniques Used in 5G Antenna Designing Technology, a Comprehensive Study.

In the recent era, fifth-generation technology (5G) has not been fully implemented in the realm of wireless communication. To have excellent accessible bandwidth feasibility, and in order to achieve the aims of 5G standards, such as higher data rates and ultrahigh-definition video streaming, the millimeter wave (mmWave) band must be employed. Services with minimal latency and many other features are feasible only in the mmWave spectrum. To avoid numerous communication complexities such as high connection losses, short wavelength, and restricted bandwidth, as well as path-loss challenges in the mmWave range, an antenna with wide bandwidth, high gain, narrow steerable beam, high isolation, low side-lobe levels, and multiband features is required to alleviate these difficulties and meet 5G communication standards. To overcome these challenges, specific strategies and techniques should be employed in the traditional antenna designing procedure to excellently improve the performance of the antenna in terms of bandwidth, gain, and efficiency and to reduce the mutual coupling effect between the closely colocated antenna elements in MIMOs and arrays. The researchers reported on a variety of bandwidth and gain improvement approaches. To gain broader coverage, traditional antenna design techniques must be modified. In this study, the latest state-of-the-art work is reviewed, such as the role of the metamaterials (MMTs), parasitic patches, hybrid feeding, EBG structure, impact of the slots with different geometrical shapes in the radiator to achieve the goal of wide bandwidth, boosted gain, reduced side-lobes level, as well as stable radiation properties. Mutual coupling reduction techniques are also briefly reported. The role of reconfigurability is focused on in this study, and at the end, the future challenges in the field of antenna design and possible remedies to such issues are reviewed.

Gate driver with low‐temperature polycrystalline silicon and oxide thin‐film‐transistor circuits for low power consumption and narrow bezel AMOLED displays

AbstractWe propose a novel gate driver circuit using low‐temperature polycrystalline silicon and oxide (LTPO) thin‐film transistors (TFTs). The proposed circuit consists of only six TFTs, four p‐type LTPS, and two n‐type a‐IGZO TFTs, without capacitor. The proposed circuit operates well when oxide TFTs have threshold voltage (VTH) of −7.5 V, which is very depletion mode. Without bootstrapping, low gate bias stress occurs on TFTs in the proposed circuit. With dual gate (DG) structure of oxide TFTs, the stability of the proposed circuit is improved. In addition, by utilizing extremely low off‐state current of oxide TFTs, ultra‐low power consumption can be achieved. The total power consumption of the proposed gate driver is less than 100 mW under a‐IGZO TFT's VTH of −6 V at 120 Hz 4k (3,840 × 2,160) resolution display. The fabricated circuit works perfectly at a pulse width of 1 μs equivalent to operating speed of 500 kHz. The proposed circuit can be applied to ultra‐high definition (UHD) and narrow bezel AMOLED display.

Energy and Delay Guaranteed Joint Beam and User Scheduling Policy in 5G CoMP Networks

Massive Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) and Coordinated MultiPoint (CoMP) technologies in Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) architecture become inevitable trend due to the advent of next-generation mobile applications, which are traffic-intensive, such as ultra high definition (UHD) video. In this paper, we study a joint beam activation and user scheduling problem in a 5G cellular network with massive MIMO and CoMP utilizing orthogonal random beamforming technique. This paper aims to minimize total Remote Radio Heads’ (RRHs’) energy expenditure in a dynamic C-RAN architecture while ensuring finite service time for all user traffic arrivals in the communication coverage. We leverage Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty framework to transform an original long-term average problem into a series of per-slot modified problems. Since the provided per-slot problem is combinatorial and nonlinear optimization problem, we are inspired by a greedy algorithm to design energy and delay guaranteed joint beam activation and user scheduling policy, namely BEANS. We prove that the proposed BEANS ensures finite upper bounds of average RRH energy consumption and average queue backlogs for all traffic arrival rates within constant ratio of capacity region and all energy-delay tradeoff parameters. These proofs are the first attempt to theoretically demonstrate guarantees of energy and queue bounds in a framework consisting of possibly negative submodular objective function and non-matriod constraints. Finally, via extensive simulations, we compare the capacity region and energy-queue backlog tradeoff of BEANS with optimal and existing algorithms, and show that BEANS attains up to 65% of energy saving for the same average queue backlog compared to the algorithms which do not take traffic dynamics and energy consumption into considerations.

Understanding Banding—Perceptual Modeling and Machine Learning Approaches for Banding Detection

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Banding is an annoying visual artifact that frequently appears at various stages along the chain of video acquisition, production, distribution, and display. With the thriving popularity of ultrahigh definition (UHD), high-dynamic range (HDR), wide-color-gamut (WCG) content, and the increasing user expectations that follow, the banding effect has been attracting increased attention for its strong negative impact on viewer experience in visual content that would otherwise have nearly perfect quality. Here, we present two different types of frameworks to detect the banding artifact. The first is knowledge-driven and is built upon computational models that account for the characteristics of the human visual system (HVS), the content acquisition, production, distribution, and display processes, and the interplay between them. The second is data-driven and is based on machine learning methods, by training deep neural networks (DNNs) with large-scale datasets</i> .

An end‐to‐end perceptual enhancement method for UHD portrait images

Advances in equipment enable photographers to take ultra-high-definition (UHD) photos, and photo retouching enables them to create an impressive image by artistically adjusting and enhancing the brightness, color etc. However, such image enhancement is an artistic and challenging task, which requires a lot of relevant experience and technology. Thus, using an automated algorithm is an attractive option. In recent years, deep learning has made great progress in image processing, which motivated the authors to explore this application in UHD image enhancement task. In this paper, an end-to-end perceptual enhancement method for UHD portrait images is proposed. Since the artistry of images comes from human perception, including the perception of exposure, structure, color etc., an image preprocessing method is proposed which can help the network learn the brightness change from the original image to the target image more accurately. Then, a composite perceptual loss function is proposed that combines global, structural, and color losses. This loss allows the network to simultaneously optimize the distance and perceptual similarity to a given target image during back-propagation. To preserve the details of the UHD image and reduce the number of network calculations and parameters, a Perceptual Enhancement Network (called PEN) based on dilated convolution is proposed. Extensive experiments on the datasets show that the method excels in baselines in both subjective and objective evaluations.

Accelerating Transform Algorithm Implementation for Efficient Intra Coding of 8K UHD Videos

Real-time ultra-high-definition (UHD) video applications have attracted much attention, where the encoder side urgently demands the high-throughput two-dimensional (2D) transform hardware implementation for the latest video coding standards. This article proposes an effective acceleration method for transform algorithm in UHD intra coding based on the third generation of audio video coding standard (AVS3). First, by conducting detailed statistical analysis, we devise an efficient hardware-friendly transform algorithm that can reduce running cycles and resource consumption remarkably. Second, to implement multiplierless computation for saving resources and power, a series of shift-and-add unit (SAU) hardwares are investigated to have much less adoptions of shifters and adders than the existing methods. Third, different types of hardware acceleration methods, including calculation pipelining, logical-loop unrolling, and module-level parallelism, are designed to efficaciously support the data-intensive high frame-rate 8K UHD video coding. Finally, due to the scarcity of 8K video sources, we also provide a new dataset for the performance verification. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method can effectively fulfill the real-time 8K intra encoding at beyond 60 fps, with very negligible loss on rate-distortion (R-D) performance, which is averagely 0.98% Bjontegaard-Delta Bit-Rate (BD-BR).

Joint Source-Channel Decoding of Polar Codes for HEVC-Based Video Streaming

Ultra High-Definition (UHD) and Virtual Reality (VR) video streaming over 5G networks are emerging, in which High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is used as source coding to compress videos more efficiently and polar code is used as channel coding to transmit bitstream reliably over an error-prone channel. In this article, a novel Joint Source-Channel Decoding (JSCD) of polar codes for HEVC-based video streaming is presented to improve the streaming reliability and visual quality. Firstly, a Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) fitting approach is proposed to estimate the positions of error channel decoded bits. Secondly, a modified polar decoder called R-SCFlip is designed to improve the channel decoding accuracy. Finally, to combine the KDE estimator and the R-SCFlip decoder together, the JSCD scheme is implemented in an iterative process. Extensive experimental results reveal that, compared to the conventional methods without JSCD, the error data-frame correction ratios are increased. Averagely, 1.07% and 1.11% Frame Error Ratio (FER) improvements have been achieved for Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels, respectively. Meanwhile, the qualities of the recovered videos are significantly improved. For the 2D videos, the average Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) gains reach 14% and 34%, respectively. For the 360֯ videos, the average improvements in terms of Weighted-to-Spherically-uniform PSNR (WS-PSNR) and Voronoi-based Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VI-VMAF) reach 21% and 7%, respectively.

Quality of 8K Ultra-High-Definition Television Viewing Experience in Practical Viewing Conditions

In this study, we examine the psychological effects of 8K ultra-high-definition television (UHDTV) under daily TV viewing conditions. The design of 8K-UHDTV targets the realization of the “ultimate 2D image.” 8K-UHDTV is already being used practically and the audience have reported experiencing a feeling of reality and presence. However, the benefits offered by 8K for daily TV viewing and the degree to which the design goals have been achieved have not been sufficiently verified. Hence, in this study, we verify them by investigating the popular impressions evoked by familiar images and their modulation with the viewing distance through subjective evaluation experiments and statistical analysis. The obtained results indicate that the impressions are enhanced by increasing the resolution from 4K to 8K, even at viewing distances beyond the design viewing distance, which are conventionally considered less effective. Thus, they confirm that 8K provides strong impressions over a wide viewing range. Furthermore, the relationship between higher-order impressions, such as “being-there” and “reality,” and lower-order impressions is derived through multiple regression analysis. This provides insight into the enhancement of higher-order impressions in production and post-processing.

Field Evaluation of Transmit Diversity Code Filter Sets in ATSC 3.0 Single Frequency Networks

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0, a recently developed terrestrial broadcasting standard, supports a Single Frequency Network (SFN), which extends service coverage and enhances received field strength without additional frequency resources. In SFN, multiple transmitters emit identical ATSC 3.0 broadcasting signals, which may cause constructive or destructive interference on a receiver side. The worst situation occurs when two signals from different transmitters are received with the opposite phase and similar power within a sample time, causing the cancellation of the received signal. In order to prevent such signal cancellation, ATSC 3.0 adopted transmitter diversity code filter sets (TDCFS), which is a frequency domain pre-distortion scheme to minimize cross-correlation among multiple transmitter signals in SFN. This paper sets up an ATSC 3.0 SFN consisting of two transmitter sites, transmitting high definition (HD) for mobile service and 4K ultra high definition (UHD) for fixed service. Layered division multiplexing (LDM) and time division multiplexing (TDM) are used to simulcast the two services with different robustness in the same radio frequency (RF) channel. Then, performance is evaluated using a threshold of visibility (ToV) and a successful reception rate. The time and frequency channel responses are changed at the same reception area when TDCFS is applied so the results show that reception performance is improved in the worst situation in SFN.

Perceptual Quality Assessment of HEVC and VVC Standards for 8K Video

With the growing data consumption of emerging video applications and users&#x2019; requirement for higher resolutions, up to 8K, a huge effort has been made in video compression technologies. Recently, versatile video coding (VVC) has been standardized by the moving picture expert group (MPEG), providing a significant improvement in compression performance over its predecessor high efficiency video coding (HEVC). In this paper, we provide a comparative subjective quality evaluation between VVC and HEVC standards for 8K resolution videos. In addition, we evaluate the perceived quality improvement offered by 8K over UHD 4K resolution. The compression performance of both VVC and HEVC standards has been conducted in random access (RA) coding configuration, using their respective reference software, VVC test model (VTM-11) and HEVC test model (HM-16.20). Objective measurements, using PSNR, MS-SSIM and VMAF metrics have shown that the bitrate gains offered by VVC over HEVC for 8K video content are around 31&#x0025;, 26&#x0025; and 35&#x0025;, respectively. Subjectively, VVC offers an average of around 41&#x0025; of bitrate reduction over HEVC for the same visual quality. A compression gain of 50&#x0025; has been reached for some tested video sequences regarding a Student&#x2019;s t-test analysis. In addition, for most tested scenes, a significant visual difference between uncompressed 4K and 8K has been noticed.

Ultra Hd High-Speed Cameras

Ultra Hd High-Speed Cameras

3-D Sound Image Reproduction Method Based on Spherical Harmonic Expansion for 22.2 Multichannel Audio

In this paper, we propose a three-dimensional (3-D) sound image reproduction method based on spherical harmonic (SH) expansion for 22.2 multichannel audio. 22.2 multichannel audio is a 3-D sound field reproduction system that has been developed for ultra-high definition television (UHDTV). This system can reproduce 3-D sound images by simultaneously driving 22 loudspeakers and two sub-woofers. To control the 3-D sound image, vector base amplitude panning (VBAP) is conventionally used. VBAP can control the direction of 3-D sound image by weighting the input signal and emitting it from three loudspeakers. However, VBAP cannot control the distance of the 3-D sound image because it calculates the weight by only considering the image’s direction. To solve this problem, we propose a novel 3-D sound image reconstruction method based on SH expansion. The proposed method can control both the direction and distance of the 3-D sound image by controlling the sound directivity on the basis of spherical harmonics (SHs) and mode matching. The directivity of the 3-D sound image is obtained in the SH domain. In addition, the distance of the 3-D sound image is represented by the mode strength. The signal obtained by the proposed method is then emitted from loudspeakers and the 3-D sound image can be reproduced accurately with consideration of not only the direction but also the distance. A number of experimental results show that the proposed method can control both the direction and distance of 3-D sound images.

Adverse effects associated with use of specific dietary supplements: The US Military Dietary Supplement Use Study

Dietary supplements (DSs) are used by 50% of Americans and 70% of United States military service members (SMs); some have adverse effects (AEs). This cross-sectional investigation examined AEs associated with specific DSs. A stratified random sample of SMs from the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy was obtained. Volunteers completed a questionnaire reporting AEs for 96 generic and 62 specific DSs. The highest prevalence (≥1 AE) in specific DS categories was 35% prohormones, 33% weight loss supplements, 26% pre/post workout supplements, 14% herbal products, 12% multivitamin/multiminerals, 11% protein/amino acids, 9% muscle building supplements, 7% other DSs, 6% joint health products, and 5% individual vitamins/minerals. Specific DSs of concern (with proportion reporting AEs) included: Libido Max® (35%), Hydroxycut Hardcore® (33%), OxyElite® (33%), Roxylean® (31%), Growth Factor 9® (30%), Super HD® (29%), Hydroxycut Advanced® (29%), Lipo 6® (28%), The Ripper® (27%), Test Booster® (27%), Xenadrine Xtreme Thermogenic® (27%), C4 Extreme® (26%), and C4 Original® (25%). Products marketed for weight loss, use before/after workout, and prohormones had the highest AE prevalence. DSs can contain substances with independent/additive AEs and/or interact with other ingredients or prescribed medications. Methods described here could provide a continuous surveillance system detecting dangerous DSs entering the market.

18F] Sodium Fluoride Dose Reduction Enabled by Digital Photon Counting PET/CT for Evaluation of Osteoblastic Activity.

The aim of the study was to assess the quality and reproducibility of reducing the injected [18F] sodium fluoride ([18F]NaF) dose while maintaining diagnostic imaging quality in bone imaging in a preclinical skeletal model using digital photon counting PET (dPET) detector technology. Beagles (n = 9) were administered three different [18F]NaF doses: 111 MBq (n = 5), 20 MBq (n = 5), and 1.9 MBq (n = 9). Imaging started ≃45 min post-injection for ≃30 min total acquisition time. Images were reconstructed using Time-of-Flight, ultra-high definition (voxel size of 1 × 1 × 1 mm3), with 3 iterations and 3 subsets. Point spread function was modeled and Gaussian filtering was applied. Skeleton qualitative and quantitative molecular image assessment was performed. The overall diagnostic quality of all images scored excellent (61%) and acceptable (39%) by all the reviewers. [18F]NaF SUVmean showed no statistically significant differences among the three doses in any of the region of interest assessed. This study demonstrated that a 60-fold [18F]NaF dose reduction was not significantly different from the highest dose, and it had not significant effect on overall image quality and quantitative accuracy. In the future, ultra-low dose [18F]NaF dPET/CT imaging may significantly decrease PET radiation exposure to preclinical subjects and personnel.

Potential Use of Drone Ultra-High-Definition Videos for Detailed 3D City Modeling

Ongoing developments in video resolution either using consumer-grade or professional cameras has opened opportunities for different applications such as in sports events broadcasting and digital cinematography. In the field of geoinformation science and photogrammetry, image-based 3D city modeling is expected to benefit from this technology development. Highly detailed 3D point clouds with low noise are expected to be produced when using ultra high definition UHD videos (e.g., 4K, 8K). Furthermore, a greater benefit is expected when the UHD videos are captured from the air by consumer-grade or professional drones. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have been published to quantify the expected outputs when using UHD cameras in terms of 3D modeling and point cloud density. In this paper, a quantification is shown about the expected point clouds and orthophotos qualities when using UHD videos from consumer-grade drones and a review of which applications they can be applied in. The results show that an improvement in 3D models of ≅65% relative accuracy and ≅90% in point density can be attained when using 8K video frames compared with HD video frames which will open a wide range of applications and business cases in the near future.

UHD (2160/HDR) and HD (1080/BT.709) Simultaneous Workflows at the CBC

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">As video content evolves from traditional television into more complex and varied forms of media, more and more of our content creators capture in higher resolution, frame rate, and dynamic range instead of traditional high-definition (HD) to give themselves creative latitude in post-production. Generating ultrahigh-definition (UHD) content comes with a lot of challenges for a traditional HD infrastructure. For example, which version(s) should be archived: The source, ungraded asset, the HD version, the social media version(s) like square and vertical, or a combination of these? If content is shot in UHD, for example, and then cropped in post, should the final, cropped HD product be the one we archive, or the UHD original? If we archive the original, how do we store information about the cropping parameters? If color and dynamic range are wider in the source than the final render (e.g., SLog3/SGamut3), which 3D look-up table is the right one to use? Should 3D LUT also be archived with the source asset? How do we link a specific asset to a specific 3D LUT for posterity? Also, public broadcasters have legal obligations with regard to content preservation, but these do not necessarily specify the format(s) for archival purposes, so we need to balance obligations, cost, and future value of assets in the process of designing such workflows</i> .

New Driving Structure to Increase Pixel Charging Ratio for UHD TFT-LCDs With High Frame Rate

This paper proposes a new driving structure of the thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) for use in notebook displays with ultra-high definition (UHD) and a high frame rate. The proposed pixel circuit improves the pixel charging ratio by reducing the RC loadings of the data lines and extending the available row-line time for pixel charging. A new gate driver circuit that generates two output waveforms in a single stage is presented to reduce the cost and occupied layout area of gate driver ICs, enabling the realization of high-resolution displays with a narrow bezel. To verify the feasibility of the proposed driving structure, a 12.3-inch panel with UHD (3840 &#x00D7; 2160) and a frame rate of 120 Hz is fabricated. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed driving structure yields a measured pixel charging ratio of more than 97.09% for a heavy loading pattern with a gray level of 255. Following an accelerated lifetime test, the measured waveforms of the proposed gate driver circuit are stable without any malfunction, demonstrating its high reliability. Therefore, the proposed driving structure and the gate driver circuit are highly suitable for use in UHD TFT-LCD notebook applications.

E-Render: Enabling UHD-Quality Cloud Gaming Through Edge Rendering

Cloud gaming services enable users to enjoy various high-quality computer games without installing them in their devices which may have poor resources. However, it consumes high bandwidth in backbone networks as game videos have to be constantly streamed to client devices, which can be a hindering factor for providing Ultra High Definition (UHD)-quality cloud gaming services whose demands are ever increasing. In this paper, we present a novel cloud gaming architecture, <i>E-Render</i>, in which the graphics engine is separated from the cloud game server and is deployed in the edge for rendering. In the architecture, since video frames are streamed from the edge server to the client device via highbandwidth subscriber networks, we can greatly save the backbone network bandwidth. To realize it, however, we need to effectively reduce the amount and latency of graphics commands transfer from the game engine in the cloud to the graphics engine in the edge server. E-render solves the problem by using novel techniques including multi-granular command deduplication and asynchronous buffer binding. We implement a prototype cloud gaming platform based on the E-Render architecture, and evaluate its performance using four real world games. The evaluation results confirm that E-Render can provide UHD-quality cloud gaming services.