智慧型手持式多媒體通信裝置於低功率與人機介面設計之研究

Abstract

近年來嵌入式手持多媒體通信裝置的需求量越來越大並且迅速地發展。然而，在設計一個具高度整合、高性能的系統晶片以及具有大螢幕高解析度和無線連接能力還有大容量的手持式多媒體通信裝置時，有許多障礙需要去克服。這些設計時的障礙包括功耗、性能要求以及使用性等因素。耗電量增加將大大影響使用者操作這些應用的時間。因此，設計低功率系統成為設計這些手持裝置主要的考量。 此外，容易使用的應用軟體及使用者介面將改善此類裝置的使用性。因此，設計直覺易用的軟體介面是這種裝置成功的關鍵。此外，由於此裝置對於高性能應用的需求，例如視訊編碼器/解碼器的應用，因此，研究降低計算複雜性和大容量儲存要求是另一重要課題。本論文以設計有兩種類型的嵌入式手持多媒體通信為例，其一是嵌入式平板手持裝置(Tablet)以及可攜式多媒體播放器(PMP)。我們將研究如何在上述兩類裝置解決設計的障礙。因此本論文提出從電路設計階段到動態電源管理的技巧並利用各項軟硬件協同設計，來達成一可重組的系統電源管理方法並應用於以平台為基礎的系統，同時也提出了以不同的使用情景和應用領域來設計電源管理方法。接下來，再利用以用戶為中心的設計流程來實現以使用者觀點為輔助裝置的平板手持裝置(Tablet)以及強調易用愉悅的使用方式為主的可攜式多媒體播放器，另外根據準則評估和可用性測試，來驗證及修改提出的人機介面(HCI)。而同時也提出一些新的軟體工具設計來支持可動態重組的使用者界面。此外，為了提升此類裝置視訊設計的最佳化，在本論文中也提出一改善的區塊動態估測演算法，此演算法利用動態地改變搜尋區域來減少視訊編碼的 計算量。

The demand for embedded handheld multimedia communication devices is large and growing rapidly. However, there are many obstacles during the design of a multimedia and network-enabled embedded handheld device with highly integral chip, high performance CPU, large screen, high-resolution display, wireless-connected capabilities and large capacity. The obstacles include considerably power and performance demanding and usability etc. Power consumption will greatly affect the usage time for the users to operate these applications. Thus, the design for low power system becomes the main consideration on those devices. In addition, user-friendly applications will improve the usability on such devices. Hence, the design of intuitive software on such device is a key to success on applied domains. Furthermore, due to the expectation of high performance applications such as video encoding/decoding from users, researches of reducing the computational complexity and memory are required. In this dissertation, there are two types of embedded handheld multimedia communication are developed. One is the embedded tablet and portable media player (PMP). And, the obstacles during the design of the above two types of device will be addressed. Then, a configurable platform design for power management has been proposed to enable flexible power schemes on designing different user scenarios and application domains. The methodology considers from the circuit design stage to dynamic power management with various hardware/software co-design issues. Next, a process of user-centered design is practiced on the tablet as an assistant device and PMP for a pleasant user interface. Also, there are the human computer interaction (HCI) methods of heuristic evaluation and usability testing to validating the design of the user interface. Also, some novel software are presented to support the configurable user interface. Furthermore, to optimize the video design, a modified block matching algorithm is proposed to reduce the computational complexity by changing search range dynamically.