Image Upscaling with Deep Machine Learning for Energy-Efficient Data Communications

Advanced algorithms of image quality enhancement have been attracting substantial attention recently due to the successful business model of video streaming services. The extremely high image quality in video streaming demands a significant increase in the transmit data rate. In turn, the required ultrahigh data rate causes the saturation of the video streaming service network if there is no remedy for this situation. Compression algorithms have contributed to the energy-efficient transmission of data; however, they have almost reached the upper bound. The demand for ultrahigh image quality by the user is significantly increasing. Meanwhile, minimizing data transmission is inevitable in energy-efficient communications. Therefore, to improve energy efficiency, we propose to decrease the image resolution at the transmitter (Tx) and upscale the image at the receiver (Rx). However, standard upscaling does not yield ultrahigh-quality images. Deep machine learning contributes to image super-resolution techniques with the cost of enormous time and resources at the user end. Hence, it is inappropriate for real-time applications. With this motivation, this paper proposes a deep machine learning-based real-time image super-resolution with a residual neural network on the prevalent resources at the user end. The proposed scheme provides better quality than conventional image upscaling such as interpolation. The comprehensive simulation verifies that our scheme substantially outperforms the conventional methods, utilizing the seven-layer residual neural network.