A data compression system and method provides a best base searching method to determine the best orthogonal basis function for wavelet-based, data compression. A processing device may receive data signals from a source and wavelet-based data compression may be performed on the received data before transmission (to a receiving component) and/or further digital signal processing (DSP) of the data signals. An encoder portion of the processing device performs the data compression using a predetermined algorithm that determines the best orthogonal basis function (base) of the signal transform (used for representing the data signals) by searching a set of bases including (approximately) all orthogonal bases available to provide the minimum number of coefficients for efficient data compression while maintaining a low error rate in reconstructing the original data signals.
