A fast trellis-based rate-allocation algorithm for robust transmission of progressively coded images over noisy channels

We propose a fast trellis-based rate-allocation algorithm for robust transmission of progressively coded images over noisy channels. The algorithm, which is an improved version of a similar algorithm by Banister et al., is based on the application of the Viterbi algorithm to a search trellis. This trellis is a substantially trimmed version of the one used by Banister et al.. The proposed algorithm is applied to images encoded by the set partitioning in hierarchical trees and the Joint Photographers Expert Group 2000 for transmission over binary symmetric channels. For different total bit budgets and channel parameters, speed-up factors of up to about three orders of magnitude are achieved.