Data compression techniques are the central to many types of modern
transmission systems. The compressed data formats are sensitive to
channel or storage errors. The integrated error control schemes,
therefore, are being used to protect against those errors. However, at a
more fundamental level, compression is even more susceptible to the
different errors that are due to failures in the computing hardware and
software facilities implementing the compression algorithms. The research
project is developing new techniques to detect errors in both
hardware and software integrated throughout the compression and
transmission parts of the systems; enhancing international compression
standards by including protection against hardware and software failures.
As electronic structures become smaller and employ low-power methods,
computer-induced errors will become important, particularly in medical
and remote sensing applications. There is currently little active
research on this subject because there is no immediate commercial
interest and it is very difficult to address the broad impact of systems
failures and errors in algorithms designed on the data.
