SBHP-a low complexity wavelet coder

We present a low-complexity entropy coder originally designed to work in the JPEG2000 image compression standard framework. The algorithm is meant for embedded and non-embedded coding of wavelet coefficients inside a subband, and is called Subband-Block Hierarchical Partitioning (SBHP). It was extensively tested following the standard experiment procedures, and it was shown to yield a significant reduction in the complexity of entropy coding, with a small loss in compression performance. Furthermore, it is able to seamlessly support all JPEG2000 features. We present a description of the algorithm, an analysis of its complexity, and a summary of the results obtained after its integration into the Verification Model (VM).