A new iterative algorithm for VQ codebook generation

We propose a new iterative algorithm for the generation of a codebook in vector quantization. The algorithm starts with an initial codebook that is improved by a sequence of merge and split operations. By merging small neighboring clusters additional resources (code vectors) will be released. These extra code vectors can be reallocated by splitting large clusters. The process can be iterated until no improvement is achieved in the distortion of the codebook. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs well in comparison to other tested methods, including the Generalized Lloyd algorithm (GLA) and two hierarchical methods.