VLSI implementation of variable resolution image compression

Variable Resolution (VR) compression of images is a new compression technique which has been developed based on the characteristics of the human eye. VR compression reduces the bandwith requirements in telepresence and teleconferencing systems. In order to perform this type of compression in real-time, a special purpose hardware is required. We describe the design of a VR Encoding/Decoding subsystem, which as designed to be interfaced, to SBus (Sun SPARC machines system Bus). The main component of this hardware unit is a VR Coder/Decoder (CODEC) VLSI chip which supports real time VR compression and decompression of up to 1024/spl times/1024 pixels at video rates. Some experimental results regarding VR compression and the quality of output images in a prototype teleconferencing system are provided.