Patent ID: 7620258

Claim:
A method of processing using hardware that includes one or more processing elements, the processing using the hardware being of an ordered series of digital signals that each has an amplitude from a finite set of amplitudes consisting of the most likely-to-occur amplitude and at least one other amplitude, the at least one other amplitude including a next most likely-to-occur amplitude to the most likely-to-occur amplitude, the processing using the hardware being in order to reduce the amount of data used to represent the digital signals and to form codewords such that the relatively more likely-to-occur values or sequences of values of digital signals are represented by relatively short codewords and the relatively 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 senes: identifying position events that each include a cluster of at least one consecutive signal having any amplitude other than the most likely-to-occur amplitude, such that the position events define relative positions and runlengths of the clusters and of any intervening runs of consecutive coefficients having the most likely-to-occur value; encoding the position events; and encoding the amplitudes of the consecutive coefficients in one or more concatenations of a plurality of consecutive clusters to form at least one codeword for each concatenation, the encoding of amplitudes including using a first amplitude coding method that exploits that runs of consecutive signals having the next most likely-to-occur amplitude are more likely to occur in clusters than are runs of other signal amplitudes, such that for at least some of the concatenations, relatively more likely-to-occur series of consecutive signal amplitudes are encoded by a shorter codeword than relatively less likely-to-occur series of consecutive signal amplitudes, such that relatively short codewords are formed to represent signal values or sequences of signal values that are relatively more likely-to-occur, and relatively long codewords are formed to represent signal values or sequences of signal values that are relatively less likely-to-occur.