Introduction to Data Compression, 4th Edition

Arithmetic Coding

4.1 Overview

In the previous chapter, we saw one approach to generating variable-length codes. In this chapter, we see another, increasingly popular, method of generating variable-length codes called arithmetic coding. Arithmetic coding is especially useful when dealing with sources with small alphabets, such as binary sources, and alphabets with highly skewed probabilities. It is also a very useful approach when, for various reasons, the modeling and coding aspects of lossless compression are to be kept separate. In this chapter, we look at the basic ideas behind arithmetic coding, study some of the properties of arithmetic codes, and describe an implementation.

4.2 Introduction

In the last chapter, we studied the Huffman coding ...