Intern, Compression and sub-sampling of attenuation maps

About InterDigital

InterDigital is a global research and development company focused primarily on wireless, video, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and related technologies. We design and develop foundational technologies that enable connected, immersive experiences in a broad range of communications and entertainment products and services. We license our innovations worldwide to companies providing such products and services, including makers of wireless communications devices, consumer electronics, IoT devices, cars and other motor vehicles, and providers of cloud-based services such as video streaming. As a leader in wireless technology, our engineers have designed and developed a wide range of innovations that are used in wireless products and networks, from the earliest digital cellular systems to 5G and today’s most advanced Wi-Fi technologies. We are also a leader in video processing and video encoding/decoding technology, with a significant AI research effort that intersects with both wireless and video technologies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on Nasdaq.

InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.

For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.

Summary

This work shall be seen as one step forward towards a more sustainable video streaming chain. Indeed, in the context of climate change, video streaming shall take part in the challenge of reducing our carbon emissions.

Attenuation maps are auxiliary maps that are used to reduce the energy consumption of an image/frame during display. Attenuation maps are generated by in-house deep learning model (DeepPVR [1]) that maximizes the image quality while reducing the power consumption at a desired rate.

Since attenuation maps share the same resolution with the original image/frame, delivering such information may result in a considerable bitrate overhead. The goal of this internship is to understand the extent of this overhead and test the potential solutions that reduce bitrate overhead.

The position will build on existing work that investigates several items such as the isolated effects of downscaling and compression on the attenuation maps. Further analysis investigating the combined impact of downscaling and compression is still an open problem for the selected candidate. After such analysis, the selected candidate will design and conduct a subjective study to collect perceptual preferences of the test cases. Furthermore, the candidate will analyze the acquired data to determine the optimum solutions for the encoding of attenuation maps.

The internship will take place in the Media Services research group of the InterDigital Video Lab. The intern will be mentored by scientists and will be part of a research project developing solutions to mitigate energy consumption in the video streaming industry.

Duration: 3 months, starting April - June 2026

Responsibilities

• Analysis of existing results

• Design and conducting subjective study

• Analysis and reporting of results

Related work

[1] O. Le Meur, C. -H. Demarty and L. Blonde, "Deep-Learning-Based Energy Aware Images," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2023, pp. 590-594, doi: 10.1109/ICIP49359.2023.10222188.

[2] Emmanuel Sampaio, Claire-Hélène Demarty, and Olivier Le Meur. 2024. How to make images less power-hungry: An objective benchmark study. In Proceedings of the Second International ACM Green Multimedia Systems Workshop (GMSys '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652104.3652525

Qualifications

• Master 1

• Image and video processing. Python

Keywords: energy-aware images, image processing, video compression, perceptual image quality

Expected Outcomes:

A thorough analysis of the available data and the results of the subjective analysis. Proposal of solutions to reduce the overhead.

Location: Rennes, France

InterDigital is an equal employment opportunity employer. InterDigital will not engage in or tolerate unlawful discrimination with regard to any employment decision, policy or practice based on a person’s sex, gender, pregnancy (including childbirth, breastfeeding and related medical conditions), age, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, military status, veteran status, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state or local  law. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, recruiting, hiring, compensation, benefits, training, assignments, evaluations, coaching, promotion, discipline, discharge and layoff.