Analysis of a wavelet-based compression scheme for wireless image communication

In wireless image communication, image compression is necessary because of the limited channel bandwidth. The associated channel fading, multipath distortion and various channel noises demand that the applicable image compression technique be amenable to noise combating and error correction techniques designed for wireless communication environment. In this study, we adopt a wavelet-based compression scheme for wireless image communication applications. The scheme includes a novel scene adaptive and signal adaptive quantization which results in coherent scene representation. Such representation can be integrated with the inherent layered structure of the wavelet-based approach to provide possibilities for robust protection of bit stream against impulsive and bursty error conditions frequently encountered in wireless communications. To implement the simulation of wireless image communication, we suggest a scheme of error sources modeling based on the analysis of the general characteristics of the wireless channels. This error source model is based on Markov chain process and is used to generate binary bit error patterns to simulate the bursty nature of the wireless channel errors. Once the compressed image bit stream is passed through the simulated channel, errors will occur according to this bit error pattern. Preliminary comparison between JPEG-based wireless image communication and wavelet-based wireless image communication has been made without application of error control and error resilience to either case. The assessment of the performance based on image quality evaluation shows that the wavelet-based approach is promising for wireless communication with the bursty channel characteristics.