Adaptive quantization and fast error-resilient entropy coding for image transmission

There has been an outburst of research in image and video compression for transmission over noisy channels. Channel matched source quantizer design has gained prominence. Further, the presence of variable-length codes in compression standards like the JPEG and the MPEG has made the problem more interesting. Error-resilient entropy coding (EREC) has emerged as a new and effective method to combat catastrophic loss in the received signal due to burst and random errors. We propose a new channel-matched adaptive quantizer for JPEG image compression. A slow, frequency-nonselective Rayleigh fading channel model is assumed. The optimal quantizer that matches the human visibility threshold and the channel bit-error rate is derived. Further, a new fast error-resilient entropy code (FEREC) that exploits the statistics of the JPEG compressed data is proposed. The proposed FEREC algorithm is shown to be almost twice as fast as EREC in encoding the data, and hence the error resilience capability is also observed to be significantly better. On average, a 5% decrease in the number of significantly corrupted received image blocks is observed with FEREC. Up to a 2-dB improvement in the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the received image is also achieved.