Recent Patents in Signal Processing (May 2013) - Quantization Schemes

For our May 2013 issue, we focus on recent patents on quantization schemes. The selection below contains patents issued in various signal processing fields in which quantization plays an integral part, such as channel coding, video compression, randomized signal measurements and distributed source coding.

US 8,411,777, "Complex vector quantization codebook for use in downlink multi-user MIMO mobile broadcast systems", by A. Ashikhmin, filed 22 June 2007, issued 2 April 2013, assigned to Alcatel Lucent (Paris, France.)

US 8,407,046, "Noise-feedback for spectral envelope quantization", by Y. Gao, filed 4 September 2009, issued 26 March 2013, assigned to Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen, China)

US 8,392,424, "Method for hierarchical signal quantization and hashing", by P. Boufounos, filed 24 August 2010, issued 5 March 2013, assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Cambridge, MA).

US 8,379,715, "System and method for video compression using non-linear quantization and modular arithmetic computation", by J. -W. Van De Waerdt, filed 27 August 2009, issued 19 February 2013, assigned to the inventor.

US 8,326,068, "Method and apparatus for modeling quantization matrices for image/video encoding", by H. Zhang and G. Cote, filed 30 August 2006, issued 4 December 2006, assigned to Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (San Jose, CA).

US 8,295,379, "System and method for non-uniform bit allocation in the quantization of channel state vectors", by C. K. Au-Yeung and S. Sanayei, filed 8 December 2009, issued 23 October 2012, assigned to FutureWei Technologies, Inc. (Plano, TX).

US 8,279,924, "Quantization parameter selections for encoding of chroma and luma video blocks", by P. Chen and M. Karczewicz, filed 20 February 2009, issued 2 October 2012, assigned to QUALCOMM Incorporated (San Diego, CA).

US 8,218,634, "Nonlinear, in-the-loop, denoising filter for quantization noise removal for hybrid video compression", by O. Guleryuz, filed 12 January 2006, issued 10 July 2012, assigned to NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan).

US 8,208,543, "Quantization and differential coding of alpha image data", by S. Srinivasan, filed 19 May 2008, issued 26 June 2012, assigned to Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA).

US 8,139,635, "Method for efficient encoding and decoding quantized sequence in Wyner-Ziv coding of video", by D. He and V. Sheinin, filed 2 April 2008, issued 20 March 2012, assigned to International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY).

If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to quantization schemes, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).