The Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) data compression algorithm for packet radio

Author

Kinsner, W. ; Greenfield, R.H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Manitoba Univ., Winnipeg, Man., Canada

fYear

1991

fDate

29-30 May 1991

Firstpage

225

Lastpage

229

Abstract

The authors present the adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch general-purpose algorithm and its implementation suitable for packet radio, telephone transmission, and archival storage. While the statistical variable-length Huffman technique compresses text by 20%, the LZW technique can compress data (text, numeric, mixed, and bit-mapped images) by 40 to 60%. The adaptive LZW algorithm has very simple logic, leading to inexpensive and fast implementations. Good LZW implementations use 9- to 16-bit codes, handling most applications. A 12-bit code is suitable for medium-size files. Efficiency improves with larger codes. A tight coding of the algorithm can compress 75 Kbytes in a second on a 1-MIPS machine

Keywords

data compression; encoding; packet switching; radio systems; 9 to 16 bits; adaptive LZW algorithm; adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch general-purpose algorithm; data compression algorithm; encoding; fast implementations; packet radio; simple logic; tight coding; Data compression; Decoding; Dictionaries; Encoding; Facsimile; Image coding; Packet radio networks; Protocols; Statistics; Telephony;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

WESCANEX '91 'IEEE Western Canada Conference on Computer, Power and Communications Systems in a Rural Environment'

Conference_Location

Regina, Sask.

Print_ISBN

0-87942-594-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WESCAN.1991.160551

Filename

160551