Single image super-resolution (SISR) aims to reconstruct a high-resolution image from its low-resolution observation. Recent deep learning-based SISR models show high performance at the expense of increased computational costs, limiting their use in resource-constrained environments. As a promising solution for computationally efficient network design, network quantization has been extensively studied. However, existing quantization methods developed for SISR have yet to effectively exploit image self-similarity, which is a new direction for exploration in this study. We introduce a novel method called reference-based quantization for image super-resolution (RefQSR) that applies high-bit quantization to several representative patches and uses them as references for low-bit quantization of the rest of the patches in an image. To this end, we design dedicated patch clustering and reference-based quantization modules and integrate them into existing SISR network quantization methods. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of RefQSR on various SISR networks and quantization methods.

单图像超分辨率(SISR)的研究旨在从低分辨率观察中重建出高分辨率图像。本研究探索了图像自相似性作为新的研究方向，并提出了一种名为参考量化的图像超分辨率方法(RefQSR)，该方法使用高比特量化的几个代表性补丁，并将它们作为剩余补丁低比特量化的参考。实验结果证明了RefQSR在各种SISR网络和量化方法上的有效性。

RefQSR: 基于参考的图像超分辨率网络量化