Analog implementation of vector quantization

Vector quantization is the main alternative to compression techniques based on the DCT. This work presents an analog VLSI implementation of a vector quantization system. Large-scale parallelism and analog computation are exploited to obtain a fast, modular system that is suitable for both simple encoding and adaptive compression, since appropriate control lines are provided. The analog VQ encoder is self-contained and therefore can be embedded into any system, either analog or digital. It implements in an efficient way the vector matching operations, therefore it can be exploited in systems based on any vector quantization algorithm. The circuit can be used to obtain very high throughput, which makes the approach suitable for high-quality image transmission.