The variable length code (VLC) is the most popular technique used in DCT-based image compression standards such as JPEG, MPEG and H.26x. Unfortunately it is highly sensitive to channel noise. For wireless multimedia transmission, any error bit will cause serious error propagation and result in large image quality degradation. Moreover, it usually has no retransmission for real time applications. As a result, a high error resilient image coding scheme is important for wireless applications. We propose a novel DCT-based fixed bit plane error resilient image coding (FBP-ERIC) scheme, which can minimize the error propagation effect with low redundancy. The complexity is much less than conventional coding schemes. In addition, it has a high accurate error detection capability for performing error concealment. Even at a 0.1% bit-error-rate, 46.5% of erroneous blocks can be accurately detected. Hence, the high image quality (PSNR=32.06 dB) can be obtained by applying a simple error compensation mechanism.