Quantization (signal processing)

Quantization, in mathematics and digital signal processing, is the process of mapping input values from a large set (often a continuous set) to output values in a (countable) smaller set, often with a finite number of elements. Rounding and truncation are typical examples of quantization processes. Quantization is involved to some degree in nearly all digital signal processing, as the process of representing a signal in digital form ordinarily involves rounding. Quantization also forms the core of essentially all lossy compression algorithms. The difference between an input value and its quantized value (such as round-off error) is referred to as quantization error. A device or algorithmic function that performs quantization is called a quantizer. An analog-to-digital converter is an example of a quantizer. For example, rounding a real number to the nearest integer value forms a very basic type of quantizer – a uniform one. A typical (mid-tread) uniform quantizer with a quantization step size equal to some value can be expressed as where the notation denotes the floor function. The essential property of a quantizer is having a countable-set of possible output-values members smaller than the set of possible input values. The members of the set of output values may have integer, rational, or real values. For simple rounding to the nearest integer, the step size is equal to 1. With or with equal to any other integer value, this quantizer has real-valued inputs and integer-valued outputs. When the quantization step size (Δ) is small relative to the variation in the signal being quantized, it is relatively simple to show that the mean squared error produced by such a rounding operation will be approximately . Mean squared error is also called the quantization noise power. Adding one bit to the quantizer halves the value of Δ, which reduces the noise power by the factor 1⁄4.