Computation of the discrete cosine transform via the arcsine transform

A procedure is described for the computation of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) via the use of the arcsine transform. The approach eliminates time-consuming multiplications, the DCT being accomplished with only additions and table lookups. While a fast Fourier transform (FFT) approach to computing the DCT involves on the order of "butterfly" computations to evaluate all coefficients, the arcsine method requires only real additions and table lookups to evaluate each DCT coefficient. Thus, for applications in which coefficients are desired or when is reasonably small (say, ), the arcsine approach is favored over that of the FFT. Some approaches to hardware implementation are presented.