Robust EBCOT coding technique for wireless image transmission

Embedded block coding with optimized truncation (EBCOT) is an efficient and scalable wavelet-based image coding technique, which divides each subband in independently coded blocks. It is therefore more error resilient than many other wavelet based schemes. However, the loss of data of a block in any lower frequency subband in EBCOT can still degrade the perceptual image quality considerably. This paper investigates the use of reversible variable length codes (RVLC) and data partitioning for the coding of coefficients of low frequency subbands in EBCOT (instead of arithmetic codes). RVLCs are known to have a superior error recovery property due to their two-way decoding capability. It is demonstrated that the proposed scheme requires only a small amount of overhead in the bit-rate, but provides a significantly improved performance in the presence of errors