Modified symmetrical reversible variable-length code and its theoretical bounds

Reversible variable length codes (RVLCs) have been adopted in emerging video coding standards-H.263+ and MPEG-4-to enhance their error-resilience capabilities (which are important and essential) in error-prone environments. This study proposes an efficient algorithm to construct a symmetrical RVLC from a given Huffman code. In addition, theoretical bounds on the maximum codeword length for fixed-length Huffman codes, and on the optimal average codeword lengths for sources with exponential distribution are provided.