A Nonuniform Sampling Approach to Data Compression

Abstract
A nonuniform sampling approach to digital encoding of analog sources is proposed. The nonuniform sampler is basically a level crossing detector (LCD) which produces a sample whenever the input to the LCD crosses a threshold level. The information about the source signal is contained in the time intervals between level crossings and in the directions of level crossings. By assigning strings of the 2-tuple "00" to represent the time between level crossings and "01" and "10" to denote the directions of level crossings, the output binary sequence of the nonuniform sampling encoder (NSE) contains a high probability of the 0 symbol, which makes it suitable for further simple run-length encoding (RLE) to attain a "good" overall compression ratio. Introduction of prediction converts the NSE to a nonuniform sampling predictive coding (NSPC) scheme, which, depending on the source, can potentially improve the compression ratio. Results obtained in the encoding of a band-limied Gaussian source and a rasterscanned black and white still image reveal that an NSE/RLE or NSPC/ RLE system exhibits performance superior to that of an adaptive delta modulation system.

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