A formal proof that bit allocation results hold for the entire class of paraunitary subband coders is presented. The problem of finding an optimal paraunitary subband coder, so as to maximize the coding gain of the system, is discussed. The bit allocation problem is analyzed for the case of the paraunitary tree-structured filter banks, such as those used for generating orthonormal wavelets. The even more general case of nonuniform filter banks is also considered. In all cases it is shown that under optimal bit allocation, the variances of the errors introduced by each of the quantizers have to be equal. Expressions for coding gains for these systems are derived
