A special class of multiple description scalar quantizers

We introduce a special class of multiple description scalar quantizer (MDSQ), which is referred to as the modified MDSQ (MMDSQ). MMDSQ features simple implementations and an efficient central-side distortion trade-off control mechanism. These advantages make it suitable for multiple description image and video coding systems: the simplicity of MMDSQ facilitates the incorporation of multiple description coding into existing coding systems. Analysis shows that this class of MDSQ can achieve the same asymptotic high-rate performance as entropy-constrained MDSQ with uniform central quantizers, for sources with smooth pdf. The performance of MMDSQ on a unit-variance Gaussian i.i.d. source is compared with that of entropy-constrained MDSQ at different rates numerically, and the results confirm the satisfactory performance of MMDSQ at rates above 3 bps/description. Application of MMDSQ to image coding also shows promising results.