Hierarchical Color Encoding for Progressive Image Transmission in Underwater Environments

Abstract

[eng] This letter presents the Progressive Hierarchical Image Encoding (PHIE) approach aimed at progressively encoding underwater images and, thus, helping in transmitting them in unreliable, low bandwidth, subaqua tic communication channels. The proposal splits an image into several, very small, fragments that can be transmitted separately. The receiver can reconstruct the image after receiving the first fragment and improve the reconstruction quality with each received fragment up to a perfect, lossless, reconstruction. An experimental comparative study using real underwater imagery and showing the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed approach is also presented.