Design and realization of improved LZW algorithm for wireless sensor networks

This paper proposes two improved lossless data compression schemes based on Lempel-Ziv-Welch coding (LZW) for wireless sensor networks. The schemes preprocess numeric data in different ways to adapt the data characteristics. In order to increase the compression rate, the value span of data is decreased by calculating increment between the sample sequence and the base value. Since the LZW is commonly effective for text data but do not apply to numeric data, the increments are replaced into the English characters respectively. Using the IAR 430 Development Environment for ultra-low power MSP430 series microcontrollers, the paper verifies the improved schemes, and the simulation tests show the improved lossless data compression schemes have remarkable superiority in reducing storage space and increasing the compression ratio.