Providing images captured by an on-board camera to surrounding vehicles is an effective method to achieve smooth road traffic and to avoid traffic accidents. We consider providing images using WiFi technology based on the IEEE802.11p standard for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication media. We want to compress images to suppress communication traffic, because the communication capacity of the V2V system is strictly limited. However, there are difficulties in image compression and transmission using wireless communication especially in a vehicular broadcast environment, due to transmission errors caused by fading, packet collision, etc. In this letter, we propose an image transmission technique based on compressed sensing. Through computer simulations, we show that our proposed technique can achieve stable image reconstruction despite frequent packet error.

Coupled with the discrete wavelet transform, SPIHT (set partitioning in hierarchical trees) is a highly efficient image compression technique that allows for progressive transmission. One problem, however, is that its decoding can be extremely sensitive to bit errors in the code sequence. In this paper, we address the issue of transmitting SPIHT-encoded images via noisy channels, wherein errors are inevitable. The communication scenario assumed in this paper is that the transmitter cannot get any acknowledgement from the receiver. In our scheme, the original SPIHT code sequence is first segmented into packets. Each packet is classified as either a CP (critical packet) or an RP (refinement packet). For error control, cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is incorporated into each packet. By checking the CRC check sum, the receiver is able to tell whether a packet is correctly received or not. In this way, the noisy channel can be effectively modeled as an erasure channel. For unequal error protection (UEP), each of those packets are repeatedly transmitted for a few times, as determined by a process called diversity allocation (DA). Two DA algorithms are proposed. The first algorithm produces a nearly optimal decoded image (as measured in the expected signal-to-noise ratio). However, its computation cost is extremely high. The second algorithm works in a progressive fashion and is naturally compatible with progressive transmission. Its computation complexity is extremely low. Nonetheless, its decoded image is nearly as good. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the decoded images. They also show that making distinction between CP and RP results in wiser diversity allocation to packets and thus produces higher quality in the decoded images.

This paper presents a new unequal error protection (UEP) image transmission system that incorporates a Lifting Wavelet Transform (LWT) and Reed Solomon (RS) coded cooperation scheme to increase image transmission diversity, as well as save transmission bandwidth. Having a partner to assist direct communication increases the resilience of low frequency subband data against an error-prone fading channel. Low frequency subbands are partitioned into two sets of data and transmitted using the RS coded cooperation scheme. High frequency subbands data are transmitted directly to a base station. Results show that the new UEP image transmission system using LWT based RS coded cooperation scheme achieves diversity gains of around 10 dB, with channel SNR from 10 to 20 dB, compared with the image transmission system with non-cooperative system under slow Rayleigh fading channel for all levels of LWT decomposition. In addition, the new UEP image transmission system using LWT based RS coded cooperation scheme with one level of wavelet decomposition offers around 37.5% bandwidth gain (β), compared with the system without LWT, which incurs a reduction of 3 dB in reconstructed image quality.

A secret image transmission scheme based on vector quantization (VQ) and a secret codebook is proposed in this article. The goal of this scheme is to transmit a set of good-quality images secretly via another high-quality cover image with the same image size. In order to reduce the data size of secret images, the images are encoded by an adaptive codebook. To guarantee the visual quality of secret images, the adaptive codebook applied at the transmitter is transmitted to the receiver secretly as well. Moreover, to enhance the security of the proposed scheme and to compact the data size of the codebook, the adaptive codebook is encoded based on VQ using another codebook generated from the cover image. Experiments show impressive results.

This paper describes a 158 MS/s JPEG 2000 codec with an embedded block coder (EBC) based on bit-plane and pass-parallel architecture. The EBC contains bit-plane coders (BPCs) corresponding to each bit-plane in a code-block. The upper and the lower bit-plane coding overlap in time with a 1-stripe and 1-column gap. The bit-modeling passes in the bit-plane coding also overlap in time with the same gap. These methods increase throughput by 30 times in comparison with the conventional. In addition, the methods support not only vertically causal mode, but also regular mode, which enhances the image quality. Furthermore, speculative decoding is adopted to increase throughput. This codec LSI was designed using 0.18 µm process. The core area is 4.74.7 mm2 and the frequency is 160 MHz. A system including the codec enables image transmission of PC desktop with 8 ms delay.

This paper proposes a two-dimensional self-matching receiver for Free Space Optics (FSO) communication system using chaotic spatial synchronization. This system is able to obtain the information of two-dimensional code from received pattern. This paper considers that proposed system is applied to two applications. The first application is image transmission. This paper shows that applying proposed system to image transmission enables to restore the desired image, which doesn't require strict alignment of receiver, and evaluates transmission optical power. The second application is Code Division Multiplexing (CDM). This paper shows that applying proposed system to CDM system enables to demodulate desired digital signals regardless of the uncertainty of received position. Moreover, the required transmission optical power and bit error rate performance are obtained by computer simulation.

In this letter, we study the problem of designing an efficient power and bit allocation scheme in the context of a hierarchical image transmission system based on an embedded multi-carrier modulation (EMCM) scheme over digital subscriber line. Authors describe a novel algorithm that performs power minimization under bit rate constraint and QoS requirement. It is based on the Hughes-Hartogs algorithm, and successively allocates the bits of the high, then low priority data streams. Simulations that assess the performance of the proposed algorithm are also provided and discussed; they demonstrate the interest of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, we propose an extension to the image transport protocol (ITP). When images are transmitted through the Internet, TCP is generally used because it ensures the reliable transmission. However, interactivity will largely affected because of its acknowledgement scheme. This becomes remarkable in the network where packet-loss rate is relatively higher like wireless LANs. For more efficient image transmission, ITP was proposed. Like UDP, in ITP transmission, packets can be transmitted without acknowledgement of the reception. This contributes to improve the interactivity, on the other hand, some of packets may lost during transmission. ITP has a mechanism that the receiver-side can control the retransmission of the lost packets to maintain the quality of the received image. However, it is a hard task for the receiver to select which packets to be retransmitted. In this paper, we propose an extension to ITP by which the server can mark the importance of each packet. This helps the receivers to select important packets for requesting retransmission for server.

With the continuing growth of the World Wide Web (WWW) services over the Internet, the demands for rapid image transmission over a network link of limited bandwidth and economical image storage of a large image database are increasing rapidly. In this paper, a classified binary-tree-structured Self-Organizing Feature Map neural network is proposed to design image vector codebooks for quantizing images. Simulations show that the algorithm not only produces codebooks with lower distortion than the well-known CVQ algorithm but also can minimize the edge degradation. Because the adjacent codewords in the proposed algorithm are updated concurrently, the codewords in the obtained codebooks tend to be ordered according to their mutual similarity which means more compression can be achieved with this algorithm. It should also be noticed that the obtained codebook is particularly well suited for progressive image transmission because it always forms a binary tree in the input space.

In this paper, a new variable length code transmission technique utilizing multicode DS/SS is proposed. A common problem associated with the use of variable length codes over wireless channels is loss of synchronization due to bit inversion caused by channel noise. The loss of synchronization produces burst errors in the received source symbols. The proposed system assigns multiple spreading codes to a single user to transmit variable length codes. The number of the spreading codes is equal to the maximum bit length of the codewords. All the bits of the codeword are spread and transmitted at one time by utilizing the assigned multiple spreading codes. Therefore no synchronization of the codeword is required. This paper evaluates the performance of the proposed technique over an AWGN channel and a Rayleigh fading channel. Our results show that the proposed technique improves the symbol error rate (SER) performance by 2-3 dB on the AWGN channel and 10-20 dB on the Rayleigh fading channel as compared with a conventional transmission technique. The source-channel coding suitable for the proposed technique improves the performance by another 15 dB on the Rayleigh fading channel. The proposed transmission technique works even in a low Es/No region.

With a view toward the improvement of life-saving rate, the advancement of emergency radio system was attempted. The telemetry technique was introduced to the mobile communication from a running ambulance. A system was newly developed which enables us to transmit the information of an emergency patient from an ambulance to an emergency room of a hospital. This system can transmit an audio signal, physiological signals such as an ECG and a blood oxygen level, as well as a color image. In the experiment, the feasibility of this technique was verified. In the test of its practical usefulness, the following points were evaluated using a mobile telephone line and an emergency radio link. With the regular condition of the communication link, the stability of signal transmission was reasonably well. The fidelity of the transmitted signal was satisfactory for the use of an emergency medicine.