Limit cycle behavior of error diffusion

Error diffusion is an important technique for digital halftoning. One of the most observable artifacts of error diffusion is the periodically repeating patterns appearing in the areas where the input is constant or slowly varying. We analyze the limit cycle behavior of error diffusion, which explains the periodic oscillation under a constant input. We discuss why certain periodic patterns are more likely to appear than the others in the image. We demonstrate how to increase or reduce the occurrence of a pattern by manipulating the error diffusion weights