A new strategy of data representation called INdependent PAss Coding (INPAC) is proposed in this paper for robust and reliable transmission of embedded zero wavelet (EZW) bit stream through noisy channels. Error handling capacity of the EZW is improved by incorporating the proposed INPAC algorithm to EZW algorithm. It suppress the effect of noise occurred in one pass on to another by restricting the data of corrupted pass to mix with the data of uncorrupted pass. For the robust and reliable reconstruction, it is essential to have some of the most important header data without error. This kind of data representation achieves a better quality of reconstruction with a slight increase in overhead of maximum 32 B. To evaluate the modified INPAC–EZW algorithm, the results are compared mathematically and perceptually (visual) with the robust block-based EZW in AWGN channel environment with 4- and 16-QAM modulation techniques and by considering various SNR values. Mathematical parameters peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), compression ratio (CR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) are used to evaluate the performance of the modified algorithm. By considering the aforementioned channel conditions, the average percentage increase in PSNR is observed to be 26.97%, average improvement in CR is observed to be 1.129% and average percentage increase in SSIM is observed to be 12.4%.