Piecewise uniform vector quantizers

Abstract

The companding model for quantizer design and analysis has been widely applied in the scalar quantization case. However, if the signal to be quantized is a vector, then the optimum companding system can be designed for only a limited number of distributions. On the other hand, multidimensional piecewise linear companders can be designed for any signal density, generating quantizers that are uniform on each region of the compander. These systems, while not optimal, can have asymptotic performance arbitrarily close to the optimum. Their analysis and implementation can be simpler than those of optimal systems. Piecewise linear companders for asymptotic multidimensional quantization are analyzed, and a method for their design is suggested.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>