Patent ID: 6934646

Claim:
A method of selecting the complexity of a compressed version of a digitized waveform, the method comprising the steps of: (a) partitioning the digitized waveform into n-many segments, each segment containing a plurality of digital values; (b) finding, for each i th segment of the partitioned digitized waveform of step (a), 1≦i≦n, a magnitude Δ i , equaling the maximum value within that i th segment minus the minimum value within that i th segment; (c) compressing the partitioned digitized waveform of step (a) by replacing the plurality of digital values within each i th segment of the partitioned digitized waveform of step (a) with a replacement value; (d) selecting a plurality of thresholds distributed along an amplitude range for the magnitudes Δ i ; (e) creating a histogram whose cells have abscissas that are the intervals between adjacent thresholds selected in step (d) and whose ordinates are the number of times, over all of the n-many segments, that each of the various Δ i met a selected comparison with each of the intervals; (f) repeating steps (a)-(e) a plurality of times for the same digitized waveform, each repetition performed with a different trial value for n; and (g) selecting a preferred value of n based upon a comparison of the corresponding histograms produced from the repetition of step (e) by step (f).