Patent ID: 7492956

Claim:
A method of operating an apparatus to process an ordered series of digital signals that each has a value that includes an amplitude from a finite set of amplitudes consisting of the most-likely-to-occur amplitude and at least one other amplitude, the processing to reduce the amount of data used to represent the digital signals and to form codewords such that the more likely-to-occur values or sequences of values of digital signals are represented by relatively short codewords and the less likely-to-occur values or sequences of values of digital signals are represented by relatively long codewords, the method comprising: for a first contiguous region in the series: identifying events that each includes a run of one or more consecutive signals having any value other than the most-likely-to-occur amplitude; for each identified event, encoding the event with an event codeword that for at least some events, relatively more likely-to-occur events are encoded by a shorter event codeword than relatively less likely-to-occur events; and for each identified event, jointly encoding a plurality of consecutive values in the run of one or more consecutive signals having other than the most-likely-to-occur amplitude, the jointly encoding being according to an amplitude coding method and generating an amplitude codeword, such that relatively short amplitude codewords are formed to represent values or sequences of values that are relatively more likely-to-occur, and relatively long amplitude codewords are formed to represent values or sequences of values that are relatively less likely-to-occur, such that codewords representing the first contiguous region can include both one or more event codewords and one or more amplitude codewords.