Signal data processing using equal importance packetization
First Claim
1. A method of processing a signal, comprising the steps of:
- separating the signal into a plurality of portions; and
assigning the portions of the signal to packets, such that a reconstructed version of the signal generated from a given subset of the packets will have substantially the same signal quality regardless of which of the packets are in the subset.
3 Assignments
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Accused Products
Abstract
The invention provides improved processing of image data and other types of signal data by representing the signal data in such a way that, when separated into packets, all packets are of approximately the same importance. As a result, if some of the packets are, for example, randomly lost in a lossy packet network, the resulting degradation in a reconstructed version of the signal is substantially uniform regardless of which packets are lost. A given image or other signal may be separated into packets using an energy equalization process, a signal whitening process, or other suitable technique. The invention may be utilized in conjunction with data transmission over a wide variety of lossy packet networks, and may be used with raw or compressed image data, as well as video, audio, speech and other types of signal data. Moreover, the invention can be used to facilitate the processing of signal data in multiresolution storage applications.
10 Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method of processing a signal, comprising the steps of:
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separating the signal into a plurality of portions; and
assigning the portions of the signal to packets, such that a reconstructed version of the signal generated from a given subset of the packets will have substantially the same signal quality regardless of which of the packets are in the subset. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
separating the signal into a plurality of subbands; and
assigning the subbands to the packets in accordance with an energy equalization algorithm such that the cumulative signal energies of the packets are substantially equal.
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7. The method of claim 1 wherein the separating and assigning steps further include:
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whitening the signal to produce a whitened signal;
separating the whitened signal into a plurality of subbands; and
assigning the subbands to the packets deterministically.
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8. The method of claim 1 wherein the separating and assigning steps are applied to the signal in an uncompressed form, and the method further includes the step of individually compressing one or more of the packets.
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9. The method of claim 1 further including the step of storing the packets in a storage device in the form of a plurality of files each suitable for generating a reconstructed version of the signal at substantially the same resolution.
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10. An apparatus for processing a signal, the apparatus comprising:
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a filter bank for separating the signal into a plurality of portions; and
a packetizer for assigning the portions of the signal to packets, such that a reconstructed version of the signal generated from a given subset of the packets will have substantially the same signal quality regardless of which of the packets are in the subset. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification