Adaptive scalar quantization without side information

In this paper, we introduce a novel technique for adaptive scalar quantization. Adaptivity is useful in applica- tions, including image compression, where the statistics of the source are either not known a priori or will change over time. Our algorithm uses previously quantized samples to estimate the distribution of the source, and does not require that side information be sent in order to adapt to changing source statistics. Our quantization scheme is thus backward adaptive. We propose that an adaptive quantizer can be separated into two building blocks, namely, model estimation and quantizer design. The model estimation produces an estimate of the changing source probability density function, which is then used to redesign the quantizer using standard techniques. We introduce non- parametric estimation techniques that only assume smoothness of the input distribution. We discuss the various sources of error in our estimation and argue that, for a wide class of sources with a smooth probability density function (pdf), we provide a good approximation to a “universal” quantizer, with the approximation becoming better as the rate increases. We study the performance of our scheme and show how the loss due to adaptivity is minimal in typical scenarios. In particular, we provide examples and show how our technique can achieve signal- to-noise ratios (SNR’s) within 0.05 dB of the optimal Lloyd–Max quantizer (LMQ) for a memoryless source, while achieving over 1.5 dB gain over a fixed quantizer for a bimodal source

Distributed video coding for wireless video sensor networks: a review of the state-of-the-art architectures

Distributed video coding (DVC) is a relatively new video coding architecture originated from two fundamental theorems namely, Slepian–Wolf and Wyner–Ziv. Recent research developments have made DVC attractive for applications in the emerging domain of wireless video sensor networks (WVSNs). This paper reviews the state-of-the-art DVC architectures with a focus on understanding their opportunities and gaps in addressing the operational requirements and application needs of WVSNs

Perceptually-Driven Video Coding with the Daala Video Codec

The Daala project is a royalty-free video codec that attempts to compete with the best patent-encumbered codecs. Part of our strategy is to replace core tools of traditional video codecs with alternative approaches, many of them designed to take perceptual aspects into account, rather than optimizing for simple metrics like PSNR. This paper documents some of our experiences with these tools, which ones worked and which did not. We evaluate which tools are easy to integrate into a more traditional codec design, and show results in the context of the codec being developed by the Alliance for Open Media.Comment: 19 pages, Proceedings of SPIE Workshop on Applications of Digital Image Processing (ADIP), 201

Adaptive Quantizers for Estimation

In this paper, adaptive estimation based on noisy quantized observations is studied. A low complexity adaptive algorithm using a quantizer with adjustable input gain and offset is presented. Three possible scalar models for the parameter to be estimated are considered: constant, Wiener process and Wiener process with deterministic drift. After showing that the algorithm is asymptotically unbiased for estimating a constant, it is shown, in the three cases, that the asymptotic mean squared error depends on the Fisher information for the quantized measurements. It is also shown that the loss of performance due to quantization depends approximately on the ratio of the Fisher information for quantized and continuous measurements. At the end of the paper the theoretical results are validated through simulation under two different classes of noise, generalized Gaussian noise and Student's-t noise