Abstract
In this paper, a novel approach to Arabic letter recognition is proposed. The system is based on the classified vector quantization (CVQ) technique employing the minimum distance classifier. To prove the robustness of the CVQ system, its performance is compared to that of a standard artificial neural network (ANN)-based solution. In the CVQ system, each input letter is mapped to its class using the minimum Euclidean distance. Simulation results are provided and show that the CVQ system always produces a lower Mean Squared Error (MSE) and higher success rates than the current ANN solutions.