Theoretical Performance of Entropy-Encoded DPCM

In this paper we derive simple approximate formulas for the performance of entropy-encoded DPCM for a Gaussian random process and a frequency-weighted mean-square distortion measure. Using these results we compare the performance of DPCM to the information theoretic rate-distortion bound. We study the effect on the performance of DPCM of the spectrum of the input process, the frequency weight in the distortion measure, and the number of prediction coefficients. We also examine briefly the case of achromatic still images using line-by-line and two-dimensional DPCM encoding with intrafield and intraframe information.