Signal data processing using equal importance packetization

摘要

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.