BOT's based on nonuniform filter banks

Parallels between orthogonal transforms and filter banks have been drawn before. Block orthogonal transform (BOT) is a special case of orthogonal transform where a nonoverlapping window is used. We relate BOTs to filter banks. Specifically, we show that any BOT can be shown as a perfect reconstruction filter bank, and any tree-structured perfect reconstruction filter bank or any orthonormal filter bank for which no filter length exceeds its decimation factor can be shown as a BOT. We then show that all conventional BOTs map to uniform filter banks. A construction method to design a BOT from any nonuniform filter bank is presented, and finding an optimal tree structure (in the sense of transform coding gain) for a given source is also discussed. The results show that the optimal, nonuniform BOT outperforms uniform BOTs having either the same number of bands or the same size in most cases.