A fast bit allocation algorithm for MPEG audio encoder

A fast bit allocation algorithm for the MPEG audio encoder is proposed. The proposed algorithm employs the bit allocation information of the previous audio frame as a reference for allocating the restricted bits to each of the 32 subbands in the current audio frame such that the number of iterations can be significantly reduced. A process of bit reallocation is also suggested to ensure the generation of an identical MPEG bitstream produced by the standard bit allocation algorithm described in the MPEG audio standard. The result shows that the speed-up of the proposed algorithm is remarkable at different encoded bitrates.