Hiroshi Kajiwara

Encoding of multi-alphabet sources by binary arithmetic coding

In case of encoding a multi-alphabet source, the multi- alphabet symbol sequence can be encoded directly by a multi- alphabet arithmetic encoder, or the sequence can be first converted into several binary sequences and then each binary sequence is encoded by binary arithmetic encoder, such as the L-R arithmetic coder. Arithmetic coding, however, requires arithmetic operations for each symbol and is computationally heavy. In this paper, a binary representation method using Huffman tree is introduced to reduce the number of arithmetic operations, and a new probability approximation for L-R arithmetic coding is further proposed to improve the coding efficiency when the probability of LPS (Least Probable Symbol) is near 0.5. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme has high coding efficacy and can reduce the number of coding symbols.