Robust Packet Image Transmission By Wavelet Coefficient Dispersement

We present a packetization method for robust image transmission over packet erasure channels. The packets are formed in such a way that the image information is spread over different frequency bands and spatial locations to avoid complete disruption of certain image blocks in case of a packet loss. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of this method. 1. INTRODUCTION Modern communication systems can experience a wide variety of channel conditions from individual bit errors to packet losses. In block based coders such as JPEG the effect of errors can be limited to a given block. Certain state of the art coders use wavelet transform and perform global coding of coefficients. These coders can experience catastrophic failures in case of bit errors or packet losses. In order to maximize compression efficiency, wavelet based coders such as Shapiro's EZW [1] or Said and Pearlman 's SPIHT [2] rely on state information. In such cases any error can lead to a break..