Design and Implementation of a 90nm low bit-rate image compression core

This paper presents a low-cost, high throughput Discrete Wavelet Transform-based image compressor. The hardware solution proposed here exploits a modified Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) algorithm and ensures that appropriate reconstructed image qualities can be achieved also for compression ratios over 100:1. Obtained results demonstrate that a maximum data rate of about 23 Mpixels/s can be sustained on a 64x64 size tile. In 90nm technology, the required area is only 1.77mm2. To obtain higher performance, multiples cores can be used in a parallel implementation.