Computation of the discrete cosine transform via the arcsine transform

A procedure is described for the computation of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) via the use of the arcsine transform. The approach eliminates time-consuming multiplications, the DCT being accomplished with only additions and table lookups. While a fast Fourier transform (FFT) approach to computing the DCT involves on the order of N\log_{2}2N "butterfly" computations to evaluate all N coefficients, the arcsine method requires only 4N - 1 real additions and 2N table lookups to evaluate each DCT coefficient. Thus, for applications in which M coefficients are desired or when N is reasonably small (say, N \leq 256 ), the arcsine approach is favored over that of the FFT. Some approaches to hardware implementation are presented.