Adaptive Quantization Scheme Research Articles

JND-based multi-module cooperative perceptual optimization for HEVC

Since the just noticeable distortion (JND) reflects the tolerance limit of human visual system (HVS) to coding distortion directly, JND-based perceptual video coding (PVC) plays an increasingly significant role in video compression with the developing explosion of video data. In this paper, we focus on the coupling effect among coding modules and provide a JND-based multi-module cooperative perceptual optimization (JMCPO) scheme for HEVC. The main contribution of the proposed JMCPO scheme includes the following three aspects. (1) Based on quantization distortion estimation, an adaptive perceptual quantization scheme is proposed using the binary search approach on the premise of that the quantization distortion is infinitely close to the estimated JND threshold. (2) The coupling effect among coding modules is first analyzed and a novel perceptual residual filtering scheme is presented based on statistic analysis of coupling strength. (3) The JMCPO scheme is finally developed through collaborative optimization of residual filtering, quantization and rate–distortion optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed JMCPO scheme saves more bitrate with better subjective and objective qualities.

Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation With Positional Shift Depth Variance and Adaptive Disparity Quantization.

Recently, attempts to learn the underlying 3D structures of a scene from monocular videos in a fully self-supervised fashion have drawn much attention. One of the most challenging aspects of this task is to handle independently moving objects as they break the rigid-scene assumption. In this paper, we show for the first time that pixel positional information can be exploited to learn SVDE (Single View Depth Estimation) from videos. The proposed moving object (MO) masks, which are induced by the depth variance to shifted positional information (SPI) and are referred to as 'SPIMO' masks, are highly robust and consistently remove independently moving objects from the scenes, allowing for robust and consistent learning of SVDE from videos. Additionally, we introduce a new adaptive quantization scheme that assigns the best per-pixel quantization curve for depth discretization, improving the fine granularity and accuracy of the final aggregated depth maps. Finally, we employ existing boosting techniques in a new way that self-supervises moving object depths further. With these features, our pipeline is robust against moving objects and generalizes well to high-resolution images, even when trained with small patches, yielding state-of-the-art (SOTA) results with four- to eight-fold fewer parameters than the previous SOTA techniques that learn from videos. We present extensive experiments on KITTI and CityScapes that show the effectiveness of our method.

Ensemble Distillation Based Adaptive Quantization for Supporting Federated Learning in Wireless Networks

Federated learning (FL) has become a promising technique for developing intelligent wireless networks. In traditional FL paradigms, local models are usually required to be homogeneous for aggregation. However, due to heterogeneous models coming with wireless sysTem heterogeneity, it is preferable for user equipments (UEs) to undertake appropriate amount of computing and/or data transmission work based on sysTem constraints. Meanwhile, considerable communication costs are incurred by model training, when a large number of UEs participate in FL and/or the transmitted models are large. Therefore, resource-efficient training schemes for heterogeneous models are essential for enabling FL-based intelligent wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an adaptive quantization scheme based on ensemble distillation (AQeD), to facilitate heterogeneous model training. We first partition and group the participating UEs into clusters, where the local models in specific clusters are homogeneous with different quantization levels. Then we propose an augmented loss function by jointly considering ensemble distillation loss, quantization levels and wireless resources constraints. In AQeD, model aggregations are performed at two levels: model aggregation for individual clusters and distillation loss aggregation for cluster ensembles. Numerical results show that the AQeD scheme can significantly reduce communication costs and training time in comparison with some state-of-the-art solutions.

Sigma Delta Quantization for Images

AbstractIn signal quantization, it is well‐known that introducing adaptivity to quantization schemes can improve their stability and accuracy in quantizing bandlimited signals. However, adaptive quantization has only been designed for one‐dimensional signals. The contribution of this paper is two‐fold: (i) we propose the first family of two‐dimensional adaptive quantization schemes that maintain the same mathematical and practical merits as their one‐dimensional counterparts, and (ii) we show that both the traditional 1‐dimensional and the new 2‐dimensional quantization schemes can effectively quantize signals with jump discontinuities, which immediately enable the usage of adaptive quantization on images. Under mild conditions, we show that by using adaptivity, the proposed method is able to reduce the quantization error of images from the presently best to the much smaller , where s is the number of jump discontinuities in the image and P () is the total number of samples. This ‐fold error reduction is achieved via applying a total variation norm regularized decoder, whose formulation is inspired by the mathematical super‐resolution theory in the field of compressed sensing. Compared to the super‐resolution setting, our error reduction is achieved without requiring adjacent spikes/discontinuities to be well‐separated, which ensures its broad scope of application.We numerically demonstrate the efficacy of the new scheme on medical and natural images. We observe that for images with small pixel intensity values, the new method can significantly increase image quality over the state‐of‐the‐art method. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Photonics-Assisted Millimeter-Wave Communication System Based on Low-Bit Gaussian Mixture Model Adaptive Vector Quantization

The quantization technique with a low-bit resolution can significantly reduce the cost and power consumption of analog-to-digital converter (ADC). It will play an important role in energy conservation and cost reduction for the incoming B5G millimeter-wave (MMW) communication systems. In this paper, we propose and demonstrated experimentally a low-bit Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based non-uniform adaptive vector quantization (AVQ) scheme for the low-cost intensity modulated envelope detection photonics-assisted 28 GHz MMW communication system for the first time. The principles of GMM-based one-dimensional adaptive scalar quantization (ASQ) and multi-dimensional AVQ are first introduced, and then are used to realize the low-bit non-uniform adaptive quantization for reducing the ADC bit resolution of MMW receiver. Furthermore, the performance of traditional uniform quantization, the present <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> -means and proposed GMM-based non-uniform ASQ/AVQ schemes are evaluated and compared in detail. Utilizing the proposed GMM-based AVQ scheme, the ADC quantization resolution in our MMW receiver can be reduced from 5 bits of the traditional uniform quantization to as low as 2 bits, without noticeable performance penalty. Moreover, as compared with the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> -means-based quantization scheme, the MMW receiver enabled by GMM-based ASQ/AVQ scheme can save about half of the quantization time under similar performance. This is mainly because the clustering based on probability converges faster than the Euclidean distance, which significantly reduces the number of iterations required. Therefore, the GMM-based AVQ scheme is a promising solution to realize high performance ADCs with low-bit resolution for future MMW-enabled optical fiber wireless access networks.

Communication efficient privacy-preserving distributed optimization using adaptive differential quantization

Privacy issues and communication cost are both major concerns in distributed optimization in networks. There is often a trade-off between them because the encryption methods used for privacy-preservation often require expensive communication overhead. To address these issues, we, in this paper, propose a quantization-based approach to achieve both communication efficient and privacy-preserving solutions in the context of distributed optimization. By deploying an adaptive differential quantization scheme, we allow each node in the network to achieve its optimum solution with a low communication cost while keeping its private data unrevealed. Additionally, the proposed approach is general and can be applied in various distributed optimization methods, such as the primal-dual method of multipliers (PDMM) and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). We consider two widely used adversary models, passive and eavesdropping, and investigate the properties of the proposed approach using different applications and demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing privacy-preserving approaches in terms of both accuracy and communication cost.

Joint Parameter Estimation From Binary Observations Over Decentralized Channels

In wireless sensor networks, due to the bandwidth constraint, the distributed nodes (DNs) might only provide binary representatives of the source signal, and then transmit them to the central node (CN). In this paper, we consider the joint estimation of signal amplitude and background noise variance from binary observations over decentralized channels. We first analyze the Cram&#x00E9;r&#x2013;Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) of the parameters of interest and develop a quasilinear estimator (QLE), in which the desirable estimates can be obtained from several intermediate parameters linearly. Next, we consider a more realistic situation where the decentralized channel is noisy during the data transmission. Based on the error propagation model, the asymptotic analysis shows that the performance of the proposed QLE is mainly dominated by the thresholds of the quantizers, which encourages us to adopt a correlated quantization (CQ) scheme by exploiting the spatial correlation among background noises/channel noises. To ease the implementation of QLE in practice, an adaptive quantization (AQ) scheme is also proposed so as to obtain reasonable selections of the required thresholds. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to validate our theoretical findings.

Adaptive Event-Triggered Quantized Communication-Based Distributed Estimation Over Sensor Networks With Semi-Markovian Switching Topologies

This paper presents a distributed state estimation method for nonlinear systems over sensor networks with Semi-Markovian switching topologies (S-MSTs). An adaptive event-triggered quantization scheme (AETQS) is developed to reduce the communication and computation burden for bandwidth-constrained sensor networks, where the quantified measurement data is determined by the specific event triggering condition. The filtering network topology evolves over time, which is assumed to be governed by a Semi-Markov chain. Based on the Semi-Markov kernel theory and Lyapunov stability theory, sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee that the error dynamics has <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sigma$</tex-math></inline-formula> -error mean square stability and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${H_\infty }$</tex-math></inline-formula> performance, which is given in the form of linear matrix inequalities. Then, the optimal disturbance attenuation level, initial triggering thresholds, and elapsed-time-dependent distributed filter gains can be determined by addressing a convex optimization problem. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

On visual masking estimation for adaptive quantization using steerable filters

A fast and accurate assessment of visual masking effects is desirable while encoding in order to utilize such effects to improve the quality of compressed videos through an adaptive quantization (AQ) scheme. Here, we propose a method of estimating the contrast masking threshold on natural scene patches, using texture cues imparted by steerable filter responses. We then employ the estimated thresholds to perform AQ for AV1 encoding. Our experimental results establish that the proposed method is able to outperform existing visual masking models in terms of estimation performance while being relatively computationally inexpensive than these models, and is also able to improve the variance based AQ algorithm that is currently deployed in the SVT-AV1 codec. Using the multi-scale structural similarity index measure (MS-SSIM) as the quality model, our approach achieves an average BD-rate of -1.82% using the uniform quantization scheme as anchor as compared to 5.83% obtained with the variance based method. We note that the proposed approach produces less visible compression artifacts than the variance based AQ approach at lower bitrates, while maintaining similar encoding complexity.

A New Image Compression Algorithm Based on Non-Uniform Partition and U-System

JPEG lossy image compression is a still image compression algorithm model that is currently widely used in major network media. However, it is unsatisfactory in the quality of compressed images at low bit rates. The objective of this paper is to improve the quality of compressed images and suppress blocking artifacts by improving the JPEG image compression model at low bit rates. First, the image texture adaptive non-uniform rectangular partition (ITANRP) algorithm is proposed which partitions the image into <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$8\times 8$</tex-math></inline-formula> size image blocks with high texture complexity and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$16\times 16$</tex-math></inline-formula> size image blocks with low texture complexity. Then, a new transform coding based on the complete orthogonal U-system and all-phase digital filter (APDF) is proposed for coding image blocks with different sizes. Next, a flexible adaptive quantization scheme is designed to quantize image blocks with different sizes by considering the sensitivity of the human visual system (HVS) to different texture complexities. Finally, combining the above method with the JPEG model, a novel image compression algorithm model with low algorithm complexity is proposed to solve the problem in JPEG. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of our algorithm model outperforms the JPEG image compression algorithms, the quality of the compressed image is greatly improved, and the blocking artifacts are also significantly suppressed.

One-Bit Quantization Design and Channel Estimation for Massive MIMO Systems

We consider the problem of channel estimation for uplink multiuser massive MIMO systems, where, in order to significantly reduce the hardware cost and power consumption, one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are used at the base station to quantize the received signal. In this paper, we study the problem of optimal one-bit quantization design for channel estimation in one-bit massive MIMO systems. Our analysis reveals that, if the quantization thresholds are optimally devised, using one-bit ADCs can achieve an estimation error close to (with an increase by a factor of $\pi /2$ ) that of an ideal estimator that has access to the unquantized data. Since the optimal quantization thresholds are dependent on the unknown channel parameters, we introduce an adaptive quantization scheme in which the thresholds are adaptively adjusted, and a random quantization scheme that randomly generates a set of thresholds based on some statistical prior knowledge of the channel. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes presents a significant performance improvement over the conventional fixed quantization scheme that uses a fixed (typically zero) threshold.

Mono-bit millimeter-wave channel estimation: Bayesian and adaptive quantization frameworks

To achieve a more reasonable cost, employment of a mono-bit quantization structure is essential in wide bandwidth millimeter-wave communications (mmW). However, in mmW channel estimation, one of the critical challenges of mono-bit quantization in each branch of the antenna is the loss of data amplitude. The latest researches offer several approaches to estimate the channel in mono-bit single and multiple antenna structures. Such methods not consider the recovery of channel amplitude and consequently are limited to finding direction. Moreover, they do not provide sparsity into account. Thus, two new schemes are introduced based on a non-adaptive Bayesian algorithm and adaptive sigma–delta modulation (SDM) to tackle these issues. In both methods, we exploit the sparsity of mmWC channel in the angle domain. To extract the sparse-based Laplacian density in case that the sparsity level is unknown, we propose a Bayesian algorithm which employs a hierarchical chain composed of Gaussian and exponential prior. Furthermore, in case that the sparsity level of an application is known or can be estimated, the adaptive mono-bit quantization schemes is proposed which retrieves the amplitude of the sparse channel by the aid of SDM and CS tools. Simulation results show that the adaptive mono-bit estimator outperforms the non-adaptive Bayesian approach comparing the mean square error as an index. Also, the proposed adaptive method, especially when a sufficient number of one-bit measurements are available, can asymptotically converge into optimum full-bit observations with lower computational complexity.

Performance Analysis of Gradient-Based Nash Seeking Algorithms Under Quantization

This paper investigates the impact of quantized inter-agent communications on the asymptotic and transient behavior of gradient-based Nash-seeking algorithms in non-cooperative games. Using the information-theoretic notion of entropy power, we establish a universal lower bound on the asymptotic rate of exponential mean-square convergence to the Nash equilibrium (NE). This bound depends on the inter-agent data rate and the local behavior of the agents' utility functions, and is independent of the quantizer structure. Next, we study transient performance and derive an upper bound on the average time required to settle inside a specified ball around the NE, under uniform quantization. Furthermore, we establish an upper bound on the probability that agents' actions lie outside this ball, and show that this bound decays double-exponentially with time. Finally, we propose an adaptive quantization scheme that allows the gradient algorithm to converge to the NE despite quantized inter-agent communications.

Perception-based adaptive quantization for transform-domain Wyner-Ziv video coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) is desirable for encoding systems with tight power or computational constraints, for which the popular practical solution is transform-domain Wyner-Ziv video coding (TD-WZVC). To achieve the similar coding performance with H.264/AVC, quantization is a key factor in TD-WZVC. Practically, the quantization matrix is trained offline and remains fixed value during coding. Optimal rate-distortion (RD) performance cannot be achieved due to the varying quality of side information (SI) frame. In this paper, a novel model of perceptual distortion probability is developed to estimate the perceptual distortion of SI frame and to derive the target perceptual distortion. With the two perceptual distortion probabilities, three components (i.e. quality of SI frame, perceptual features and RD optimization) are integrated to determine the optimal quantization matrix adaptively, which improves the coding performance. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme can adaptively determine proper quantization matrix online and achieve similar visual quality with less bit-rate, as compared to other adaptive quantization schemes in TD-WZVC.

Adaptive one-bit quantization for compressed sensing

There have been a number of studies on sparse signal recovery from one-bit quantized measurements. Nevertheless, less attention has been paid to the choice of the quantization thresholds and its impact on the signal recovery performance. In this paper, we examine the problem of quantization in a general framework of one-bit compressed sensing with non-zero quantization thresholds. Our analysis shows that when the number of one-bit measurements is sufficiently large, with a high probability the sparse signal can be recovered with an error decaying linearly with the ℓ2-norm of the difference between the quantization thresholds and the original unquantized measurements. Specifically, by setting the thresholds sufficiently close to the original unquantized measurements, sparse signals can be recovered with an arbitrarily small error. By borrowing an idea from the Delta modulation, we propose an adaptive quantization scheme where the quantization thresholds are iteratively adjusted based on previous encoded bits such that they eventually oscillate around the original unquantized measurements with decreasing granular noise. Numerical results are provided to collaborate our theoretical results and to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Two forward adaptive dual-mode companding scalar quantizers for Gaussian source

In this paper we propose a novel model of piecewise linear companding scalar quantizer (PLCSQ) having the piecewise linear compressor function determined by minimizing the mean-squared error between the optimal compressor function and the piecewise linear compressor function for the Gaussian source subject to the constraint of the equal number of cells per segments. We show that with the increase of the number of segments, the difference between the optimal compressor function and the novel piecewise linear compressor function decreases, which implies that the novel PLCSQ, having a simpler design and implementation procedure compared to the one of optimal companding scalar quantizer (OCSQ), can be used as a good alternative for OCSQ. We also consider the implementation of these two quantizers in the forward adaptive dual-mode quantization scheme. The numerical results presented in the paper indicate that the proposed quantizers are worth implementing not only in view of flexibility in the bit rate choice, but also in view of the significant gain in signal to quantization noise ratio (SQNR) achieved over the one forward adaptive unrestricted companding scalar quantizer. Also, the numerical results indicate great possibilities for application of the proposed quantizers in high-quality quantization of Gaussian source signals.

Position‐based adaptive quantization for target location estimation in wireless sensor networks using one‐bit data

AbstractThe problem of target location estimation in a wireless sensor network is considered, where due to the bandwidth and power constraints, each sensor only transmits one‐bit information to its fusion center. To improve the performance of estimation, a position‐based adaptive quantization scheme for target location estimation in wireless sensor networks is proposed to make a good choice of quantizer' thresholds. By the proposed scheme, each sensor node dynamically adjusts its quantization threshold according to a kind of position‐based information sequences and then sends its one‐bit quantized version of the original observation to a fusion center. The signal intensity received at local sensors is modeled as an isotropic signal intensity attenuation model. The position‐based maximum likelihood estimator as well as its corresponding position‐based Cramér–Rao lower bound are derived. Numerical results show that the position‐based maximum likelihood estimator is more accurate than the classical fixed‐quantization maximum likelihood estimator and the position‐based Cramér–Rao lower bound is less than its fixed‐quantization Cramér‐Rao lower bound. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Channel-Aware Adaptive Quantization Method for Source Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper considers the problem of source localization using quantized observations in wireless sensor networks where, due to bandwidth constraint, each sensor’s observation is usually quantized into one bit of information. First, a channel-aware adaptive quantization scheme for target location estimation is proposed and local sensor nodes dynamically adjust their quantization thresholds according to the position-based information sequence. The novelty of the proposed approach comes from the fact that the scheme not only adopts the distributed adaptive quantization instead of the conventional fixed quantization, but also incorporates the statistics of imperfect wireless channels between sensors and the fusion center (binary symmetric channels). Furthermore, the appropriate maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), the performance metric Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB), and a sufficient condition for the Fisher information matrix being positive definite are derived, respectively. Simulation results are presented to show that the appropriated CRLB is less than the fixed quantization channel-aware CRLB and the proposed MLE will approach their CRLB when the number of sensors is large enough.

무선 네트워크를 위한 분산형 비밀 키 추출 방식

In this paper, we present a secret key distribution protocol without resorting to a key management infrastructure targeting at providing a low-complexity distributed solution to wireless network. The proposed scheme extracts a secret key from the random fluctuation of wireless channels. By exploiting time division duplexing transmission, two legitimate users, Alice and Bob can have highly correlated channel gains due to channel reciprocity, and a pair of random bit sequences can be generated by quantizing the channel gains. We propose a novel adaptive quantization scheme that adjusts quantization thresholds according to channel variations and reduces the mismatch probability between generated bit sequences by Alice and Bob. BCH codes, as a low-complexity and pratical approach, are also employed to correct the mismatches between the pair of bit sequences and produce a secret key shared by Alice and Bob. To maximize the secret key extraction rate, the parameters, quantization levels and code rates of BCH codes are jointly optimized.

Pseudo Two-Hop Distributed Consensus with Adaptive Quantization

In order to improve the accuracy and the convergence rate of distributed consensus under quantized communication, in the paper, based on adaptive quantization scheme, we propose the pseudo two-hop distributed consensus algorithm. By analyses and simulations, Results show that the pseudo two-hop distributed consensus algorithm based on adaptive quantization can reach an average consensus, and its convergence rate is higher than that of the first-order adaptive quantized distributed consensus algorithm, moreover, the mean square errors are smaller within the finite steps.