LOW-POWER SIGNAL-PROCESSING SYSTEM-DESIGN FOR WIRELESS APPLICATIONS

Our present ability to work with most multimedia data has been confine d to a wired environment, requiring both the data source and the recei ver to be physically connected to a power supply and a wired communica tion link. This article describes the design principles applicable to wireless signal processing systems, using a portable video-on-demand s ystem as an example. The discussion will focus on both the algorithm a nd circuit design techniques developed for implementing a low-power vi deo compression/decompression system at power levels that are two orde rs of magnitude below existing solutions. This low-power video compres sion system not only provides a compression efficiency similar to indu stry standards, but also maintains a high degree of error tolerance to guard against the transmission errors often encountered in wireless c ommunication.