SIGNAL COMPRESSION - TECHNOLOGY TARGETS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Recent years have witnessed significant progress in the compression of speech, audio, image, and video signals. This has been the result of an interworking of coding theory, signal processing, and psychophysics. Advances in compression have been accompanied by numerous standards for digital coding and communication, both national and international. Emerging technology goals require even greater levels of signal compression. As we address these goals, and as we seek to define and approach fundamental limits in coding, we are guided by several promising trends in compression research, some of which represent cross-disciplinary evolution in the seemingly very different domains of acoustic and visual signals. Important aspects of new work in the field are the creation of refined methodologies for the measurement of signal distortion and coded signal quality, and increased interaction of source coding technology with other communications disciplines such as channel coding and networking.