Multiple description trellis-coded vector quantization

Multiple description schemes for trellis coded vector quantizers are introduced. For these schemes, the Viterbi algorithm provides an optimal path for encoding and the design procedure utilizes the generalized Lloyd algorithm for suboptimal codebooks. The schemes are generalization of Jafarkhani and Throkh (see ICIP '98, Proceedings. of International Conference on Image Processing, vol.1, p.669-673,1998 and IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol.47, no.6, p.799-803, 1999) method in both temporal and spatial senses. A lower bound on rate-distortion region for more than three descriptions is given. The lower bound is a generalization of Ozarow's (1980) achievable region for a two channel and three description scheme.