In this paper, we introduce a minimum noise structure for ladder-based bior
thogonal (MINLAB) filter bank. The minimum noise structure ensures that the
quantization error has a unity noise gain, even though the filter bank is
biorthogonal, The coder has a very low design and implementation cost. Perf
ect reconstruction property is structurally preserved, Optimal bit allocati
on and coding gain formulas are derived, We show that the coding gain of th
e optimal MINLAB coder is always greater than or equal to unity, For both A
R(1) process and MA(1) process, the MINLAB coder with two taps has a higher
coding gain than the optimal orthonormal coder with an infinite number of
taps, In addition to its superior decorrelation ability, it has many other
desired features that make it a potentially valuable and attractive alterna
tive to the orthonormal coder, especially for the high-fidelity compression
.