Variable-length Prefix Codes with Multiple Delimiters
Anatoly V. Anisimov, Igor O. Zavadskyi · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory · 2017
Let m1, m2, . . . , mt be a fixed set of natural integers given in ascending order. A multi-delimiter code Dm1,...,mtconsists of t words of the form 1mi0 and all other binary words with suffixes having one of the forms 01mi0 that cannot occur in other places of a word, i = 1, . . . , t. Completeness, universality, and density characteristics of multi-delimiter codes are proved. Encoding of integers by multi-delimiter codes is considered in detail. For these codes, fast byte aligned decoding algorithms are also discussed. The comparison of compression rate and decoding speed of Fibonacci codes, (s, c)-dense codes and different multi-delimiter codes is presented. By many useful properties, multi-delimiter codes are superior to Fibonacci codes.