Data compression method and system
AssigneeCalifornia Institute of Technology
InventorsMichelle Effros, Dan Muresan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A signal encoding/decoding system and method are provided, where a signal quantizer is designed by minimizing a target function in accordance with a rate/distortion tradeoff. The system and method can be applied to give lossy compression of data for graphic or music files and also to smart-server applications, in accordance with the available bandwidth.
Claims31
A signal encoding system having a coder for encoding signals, the coder including a quantizer and a lossless coder, the quantizer producing a distortion on the signals to be encoded, wherein the quantizer is an optimal quantizer under a rate/distortion tradeoff, so that the distortion is minimized when the rate of the optimal quantizer is no larger than a specified value.
A signal decoding system having a decoder for decoding signals, the decoder including a lossless decoder and an inverse quantizer wherein the inverse quantizer is an optimal quantizer under a rate/distortion tradeoff, so that the distortion is minimized when the rate of the optimal quantizer is no larger than a specified value.
A signal encoding method for use in a signal encoding system, comprising the steps of:
- providing a source alphabet containing a set of source characters;
- approximating the set of source characters by designing a quantizer and applying the designed quantizer to the set of source characters, thus producing a distortion on the set of source characters;
- and
- applying a compression algorithm to the smaller set of characters, wherein the step of designing a quantizer comprises the steps of:
- defining a target function depending on the distortion on the set of source characters;
- and
- minimizing the target function.
A client-server system comprising a server and a plurality of clients, wherein when a client of the plurality of clients requests data to the server, the server provides the client with an approximation of the requested data, the approximation being based on a quantization process of the requested data, thus producing distortion on the requested data, the quantization process approximating the requested data to a smaller number of data and comprising a step of designing a quantizer by defining a target function and minimizing the target function.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.