Lowcomplexity M-channel multiple description coding with two-rate predictive coding and staggered quantization

This paper presents a new low complexity multiple description coding (MDC) method that can generate any number of descriptions. For correlated sources, a special DPCM encoder is used in each description, such that it carries higher rate information of a subset of the samples and lower rate information of the rest. The lower rate codings in different descriptions are designed to be mutually refinable using staggered scalar quantizers. The closed-form expression of the expected distortion is derived when an arbitrary subset of the descriptions are received. Experimental results on natural images using lapped transform show that the proposed method is competent with the state-of-the-art multiple description image coders.