Encoding device and encoding method for multichannel encoding of vibrotactile signals and decoding and decoding method

Abstract

Encoding device for encoding vibrotactile multichannel signals, includes an encoder input module configured to receive a multichannel signal; a transform module adapted to execute a discrete wavelet transform of each channel of the multichannel signal and to generate a respective frequency range representation of each channel; a psychohaptic model unit designed to allocate to each channel, based on the respective frequency range representation, a mathematical representation of human perception of the channel; a clustering module configured to group, based on the allocated mathematical representation and a similarity measure of the channels, the wavelet-transformed channels of each multichannel signal into clusters, wherein each cluster is allocated a reference channel; a reference encoding module designed to quantize and compress wavelet coefficients of the reference channels which result from the performed discrete wavelet transform of the reference channels; a differential encoding module configured to encode the channels within a cluster, which are not a reference channel, in relation to the reference channel or at least one other channel of the cluster; and an encoder output module which outputs the clustered, compressed channels of each multichannel signal as a bit stream.