Vector quantization with variable-precision classification.

We investigate variable-precision classification (VPC) for speeding vector quantization (VQ). VPC evaluates bit-serially, from the most significant bit. When the magnitude of the error due to the unevaluated bits is less than the absolute magnitude of the discriminant, we can classify without processing the remaining bits. A proof shows that as the operand precision increases, the average necessary precision becomes asymptotically independent of the operand precision, VPC makes the complexity of the L(2) norm equivalent to the L(1) norm. In VQ of real images, on average, the codevector element's precision necessary for classification was under four bits. We implemented binary classification circuitry using VPC and conventional approaches. The key modules were designed and their performance estimated assuming 1.0-mum gate array technology. The implementations could search binary pruned trees at the television quality video rate. When the overall execution time is important, VPC more than halves the computational complexity.     

Vector quantization with hierarchical classification of sub-blocks

A hierarchical classified vector quantization (HCVQ) method is described. In this method, the image is coded in several steps, starting with a relatively large block size, and successively dividing the block into smaller sub-blocks in a quad-tree fashion. The initial block is first vector quantized in the normal way. Classified vector quantization is then performed for its sub-blocks using the vector index of the initial block, i.e. rough information of the image, and the location of the sub-block within the initial block as classifiers. The coding proceeds in a similar way, adding more information of the fine details at each level. The method is found to be effective and to give a good subjective quality. It is also simple to implement, leading to coding speeds typical to a tree search VQ.     

Vector quantization with transmission energy allocation fortime-varying channels

This work is concerned with the problem of designing robust, vector quantizer (VQ)-based communication systems for operation over time-varying Gaussian channels. Transmission energy allocation to VQ codeword bits, according to their error sensitivities, is a powerful tool for improving robustness to channel noise. The power of this technique can be further enhanced by appropriately combining it with index assignment methods. We pose the corresponding joint optimization problem and suggest a simple iterative algorithm for finding a locally optimal solution. The susceptibility of the solution to poor local minima is significantly reduced by an enhanced version of the algorithm which invokes the method of noisy channel relaxation whereby the VQ system is optimized while gradually decreasing the assumed level of channel noise. In a series of experiments, the resulting combined technique is shown to outperform standard pseudo-Gray coding by up to 3.5 dB and to exhibit graceful degradation at mismatched channel conditions. Finally, we extend these ideas to the case where both the transmitter and the receiver have information on the current state of a time-varying channel. The proposed method is based on switched encoding and adaptive decoding. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves close to optimal performance     

Vector quantization in speech coding

Quantization, the process of approximating continuous-amplitude signals by digital (discrete-amplitude) signals, is an important aspect of data compression or coding, the field concerned with the reduction of the number of bits necessary to transmit or store analog data, subject to a distortion or fidelity criterion. The independent quantization of each signal value or parameter is termed scalar quantization, while the joint quantization of a block of parameters is termed block or vector quantization. This tutorial review presents the basic concepts employed in vector quantization and gives a realistic assessment of its benefits and costs when compared to scalar quantization. Vector quantization is presented as a process of redundancy removal that makes effective use of four interrelated properties of vector parameters: linear dependency (correlation), nonlinear dependency, shape of the probability density function (pdf), and vector dimensionality itself. In contrast, scalar quantization can utilize effectively only linear dependency and pdf shape. The basic concepts are illustrated by means of simple examples and the theoretical limits of vector quantizer performance are reviewed, based on results from rate-distortion theory. Practical issues relating to quantizer design, implementation, and performance in actual applications are explored. While many of the methods presented are quite general and can be used for the coding of arbitrary signals, this paper focuses primarily on the coding of speech signals and parameters.     

Vector quantization by deterministic annealing

A deterministic annealing approach is suggested to search for the optimal vector quantizer given a set of training data. The problem is reformulated within a probabilistic framework. No prior knowledge is assumed on the source density, and the principle of maximum entropy is used to obtain the association probabilities at a given average distortion. The corresponding Lagrange multiplier is inversely related to the `temperature' and is used to control the annealing process. In this process, as the temperature is lowered, the system undergoes a sequence of phase transitions when existing clusters split naturally, without use of heuristics. The resulting codebook is independent of the codebook used to initialize the iterations     

Vector quantization using tree-structured self-organizing featuremaps

In this paper, we propose a binary-tree structure neural network model suitable for structured clustering. During and after training, the centroids of the clusters in this model always form a binary tree in the input pattern space. This model is used to design tree search vector quantization codebooks for image coding. Simulation results show that the acquired codebook not only produces better-quality images but also achieves a higher compression ratio than conventional tree search vector quantization. When source coding is applied after VQ, the new model performs better than the generalized Lloyd algorithm in terms of distortion, bits per pixel, and encoding complexity for low-detail and medium-detail images     

A complexity reduction technique for image vector quantization

A technique for reducing the complexity of spatial-domain image vector quantization (VQ) is proposed. The conventional spatial domain distortion measure is replaced by a transform domain subspace distortion measure. Due to the energy compaction properties of image transforms, the dimensionality of the subspace distortion measure can be reduced drastically without significantly affecting the performance of the new quantizer. A modified LBG algorithm incorporating the new distortion measure is proposed. Unlike conventional transform domain VQ, the codevector dimension is not reduced and a better image quality is guaranteed. The performance and design considerations of a real-time image encoder using the techniques are investigated. Compared with spatial domain a speed up in both codebook design time and search time is obtained for mean residual VQ, and the size of fast RAM is reduced by a factor of four. Degradation of image quality is less than 0.4 dB in PSNR.     

图像多小波域矢量量化策略

提出一种基于多小波变换结合矢量量化的图像编码算法(MDWT VQ)。首先对图像进行多小波分解,然后对高频系数用改进后的LBG算法形成的码书进行VQ编码。算法充分利用了多小波域不同分辨率层间各方向子图像的相似性,仅对最高分辨率层进行码书地址索引,低级分辨率层的系数按照一定的组织形式直接套用最高分辨率层的地址索引信息。对比实验的结果验证了该算法在提高图像的重建质量以及在降低位码率方面均比传统的单小波图像编码算法有一定的提高。     

Vector quantization for compression of multichannel ECG

We propose a scheme based on vector quantization (VQ) for the data-compression of multichannel ECG waveforms. N-channel ECG is first coded using m-AZTEC, a new, multichannel extension of the AZTEC algorithm. As in AZTEC, the waveform is approximated using only lines and slopes; however, in m-AZTEC, the N-channels are coded simultaneously into a sequence of N + 1 dimensional vectors, thus exploiting the correlation that exists across channels in the AZTEC duration-parameter. Classified vector quantization (CVQ) of the m-AZTEC output is next performed to exploit the correlation in the other AZTEC parameter, namely, the value-parameter. CVQ preserves the waveform morphology by treating the lines and slopes as two perceptually-distinct classes. Both m-AZTEC and CVQ provide data-compression and their performance improves as the number of channels increases. Moreover, the final output differs little from the AZTEC output and hence ought to enjoy the same acceptability.     

Vector quantization of pitch information in Mandarin speech

A method of quantizing the shape of pitch contour segments of Mandarin speech by using orthogonal polynomial representation and vector quantization techniques is proposed. Only a very limited number of representative pitch contour patterns of words can be found in Mandarin conversation; therefore, pitch information can be represented by the shape and the length of the pitch contour segment word by word instead of frame by frame. An average bit rate of 0.78 b/frame (34.67 b/s) for voiced sounds was achieved. The method is a variable-rate coding scheme with an average delay of 317 ms     

Vector quantization of image subbands: a survey

Subband and wavelet decompositions are powerful tools in image coding because of their decorrelating effects on image pixels, the concentration of energy in a few coefficients, their multirate/multiresolution framework, and their frequency splitting, which allows for efficient coding matched to the statistics of each frequency band and to the characteristics of the human visual system. Vector quantization (VQ) provides a means of converting the decomposed signal into bits in a manner that takes advantage of remaining inter and intraband correlation as well as of the more flexible partitions of higher dimensional vector spaces. Since 1988, a growing body of research has examined the use of VQ for subband/wavelet transform coefficients. We present a survey of these methods.     

Vector quantization for entropy coding of image subbands

Vector quantization for entropy coding of image subbands is investigated. Rate distortion curves are computed with mean square error as a distortion criterion. The authors show that full-search entropy-constrained vector quantization of image subbands results in the best performance, but is computationally expensive. Lattice quantizers yield a coding efficiency almost indistinguishable from optimum full-search entropy-constrained vector quantization. Orthogonal lattice quantizers were found to perform almost as well as lattice quantizers derived from dense sphere packings. An optimum bit allocation rule based on a Lagrange multiplier formulation is applied to subband coding. Coding results are shown for a still image.     

Vector quantization for license-plate location and image coding

License-plate location in sensor images plays an important role in vehicle identification for automated transport systems (ATS). This paper presents a novel method based on vector quantization (VQ) to process vehicle images. The proposed method makes it possible to perform superior picture compression for archival purposes and to support effective location at the same time. As compared with classical approaches, VQ encoding can give some hints about the contents of image regions; such additional information can be exploited to boost location performance. The VQ system can be trained by way of examples; this gives the advantages of adaptiveness and on-field tuning. The approach has been tested in a real industrial application and included satisfactorily in a complete ATS for vehicle identification     

Vector quantization using spectral index-based multiplesubcodebooks for hyperspectral data compression

This paper describes a spectral index (SI)-based multiple subcodebook algorithm (MSCA) for lossy hyperspectral data compression. The scene of a hyperspectral dataset to be compressed is delimited into n regions by segmenting its SI image. The spectra in each region have similar spectral characteristics. The dataset is then separated into n subsets, corresponding to the n regions. While keeping the total number of codevectors the same (i.e. the same compression ratio), not just a single codebook, but n smaller and more efficient subcodebooks are generated. Each subcodebook is used to compress the spectra in the corresponding region. With the MSCA, both the codebook generation time (CGT) and coding time (CT) can be improved by a factor of around n at almost no loss of fidelity. Four segmentation methods for delimiting the scene of the data cube were studied. Three hyperspectral vector quantization data compression systems that use the improved techniques were simulated and tested. The simulation results show that the CGT could be reduced by more than three orders of magnitude, while the quality of the codebooks remained good. The overall processing speed of the compression systems could be improved by a factor of around 1000 at an average fidelity penalty of 1.0 dB     

一种基于混合蚁群算法的矢量量化码书设计算法

提出了一种基于混合蚁群算法的矢量量化码书设计算法。该算法首先通过自适应地调整截取转移概率的参数,加大蚁群算法的搜索最优解的力度;然后以蚁群算法搜索的结果作为初始解,利用改进的LBG算法作进一步的搜索,从而加快算法的收敛速度。实验结果表明,该算法不但大大提高码书性能,而且也缩短了运行时间,解码恢复图像能获得较高的主、客观质量。     

Low complexity PAPR reduction techniques for clipping and quantization noise mitigation in direct-detection O-OFDM systems

We present different distortionless peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction techniques that can be easily applied, without any symmetry restriction, in direct-detection (DD) optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O-OFDM) systems based on the fast Hartley transform (FHT). The performance of DD O-OFDM systems is limited by the constraints on system components such as digital-to-analog converter (DAC), analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) and electrical amplifiers. In this paper, in order to relax the constraints on these components, we propose to symmetrically clip the transmitted signal and apply low complexity (LC) distortionless PAPR reduction schemes able to mitigate, at the same time, PAPR, quantization and clipping noise. We demonstrate that, applying LC-selective mapping (SLM) without any additional transform block, the PAPR reduction is $1.5\text{dB}$ with only one additional FHT block using LC-partial transmit sequence (PTS) with random partitions; up to $3.1\text{dB}$ reduction is obtained. Moreover, the sensitivity performance and the power efficiency are enhanced. In fact, applying LC PAPR reduction techniques with one additional transform block and a 6 bit DAC resolution, the required receiver power for 8 dB clipping level and for a ${10}^{-3}\text{BER}$ is reduced by $5.1\text{dB}$.     

Constrained-storage vector quantization with a universal codebook

Many image compression techniques require the quantization of multiple vector sources with significantly different distributions. With vector quantization (VQ), these sources are optimally quantized using separate codebooks, which may collectively require an enormous memory space. Since storage is limited in most applications, a convenient way to gracefully trade between performance and storage is needed. Earlier work addressed this problem by clustering the multiple sources into a small number of source groups, where each group shares a codebook. We propose a new solution based on a size-limited universal codebook that can be viewed as the union of overlapping source codebooks. This framework allows each source codebook to consist of any desired subset of the universal code vectors and provides greater design flexibility which improves the storage-constrained performance. A key feature of this approach is that no two sources need be encoded at the same rate. An additional advantage of the proposed method is its close relation to universal, adaptive, finite-state and classified quantization. Necessary conditions for optimality of the universal codebook and the extracted source codebooks are derived. An iterative design algorithm is introduced to obtain a solution satisfying these conditions. Possible applications of the proposed technique are enumerated, and its effectiveness is illustrated for coding of images using finite-state vector quantization, multistage vector quantization, and tree-structured vector quantization.     

Robust hyperspectral image coding with channel-optimizedtrellis-coded quantization

This paper presents a wavelet-based hyperspectral image coder that is optimized for transmission over the binary symmetric channel (BSC). The proposed coder uses a robust channel-optimized trellis-coded quantization (COTCQ) stage that is designed to optimize the image coding based on the channel characteristics. This optimization is performed only at the level of the source encoder and does not include any channel coding for error protection. The robust nature of the coder increases the security level of the encoded bit stream, and provides a much higher quality decoded image. In the absence of channel noise, the proposed coder is shown to achieve a compression ratio greater than 70:1, with an average peak SNR of the coded hyperspectral sequence exceeding 40 dB. Additionally, the coder is shown to exhibit graceful degradation with increasing channel errors