Quantization (signal processing)

Quantization, in mathematics and digital signal processing, is the process of mapping a large set of input values to a (countable) smaller set. 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.

Basic properties of quantization

Because quantization is a many-to-few mapping, it is an inherently non-linear and irreversible process (i.e., because the same output value is shared by multiple input values, it is impossible in general to recover the exact input value when given only the output value).