Abstract

Error diffusion is an important technique for digital halftoning. The error diffusion system is required to be stable to guarantee its proper operation. It can be shown that an inappropriate choice of error diffusion coefficients can cause unlimited quantization error, which masks the input and generates unacceptable output images. There are many different definitions of stability. Here we are particularly interested in a bounded quantization error. A BIBO (bounded input, bounded output) type definition is adopted. The error diffusion is considered to be stable if and only if quantization error is bounded for any bounded input sequence. The stability is governed by the impulse response of the filter associated with the error diffusion process. The stability conditions are discussed in the presentation.

© 1992 Optical Society of America