Using synchronization bits to boost compression by substring enumeration

A new lossless data compression technique called compression via substring enumeration (CSE) has recently been introduced. It has been observed that CSE achieves lower performance on binary data. An hypothesis has been formulated that suggests that CSE loses track of the position of the bits relative to the byte boundaries more easily in binary data and that this confusion incurs a penalty for CSE. This paper questions the validity of the hypothesis and proposes a simple technique to reduce the penalty, in case the hypothesis is correct. The technique consists in adding a preprocessing step that inserts synchronization bits in the data in order to boost the performance of CSE. Experiments provide strong evidence that the formulated hypothesis is true and they demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of synchronization bits.