ADAPTIVE WAVELET DATA COMPRESSION

INFORMATION IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY IN TODAY'S SOCIETY AND THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION IS INCRASING AT A PHENOMENAL RATE. AS A RESULT, THE ABILITY TO STORE, ACCESS, AND TRANSMIT INFORMATION IN AN EFFICIENT MANNER IS BECOMING CRUCIAL. IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY, NEWLY-EMERGING VOICE AND IMAGE APPLICATIONS SUCH AS VOICE MAIL, TEXT-TO-VOICE SYSTEMS, VOICE-ANNOTATED RECORDS, VOICE RECOGNITION, VOICEPRINTING, AND VIDEOCONFERENCING REQUIRE LARGE AMOUNTS OF VOICE OR IMAGE DATA TO BE STORED ON HARD DISKS FOR RAPID ACCESS OR TO BE TRANSMITTED OVER CHANNELS HAVING LIMITED BANDWIDTH. NEW, EFFICIENT DATA COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES ARE REQUIRED TO BRING THESE APPLICATIONS TO REALITY. FASTMAN, INC., HAS DEVELOPED A NEW ALGORITHM, CALLED THE ADAPTIVE WAVELET TRANSFORM (AWT), TO PRODUCE HIGH-RATIO DATA COMPRESSION WHILE MAINTAINING THE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL DATA. THE FEASIBILITY OF THE ALGORITHM FOR REAL-TIME DATA COMPRESSION OF SPEECH AND IMAGE DATA IS BEING DETERMINED.