Arithmetic coding for countable alphabet sources with finite precision
An improved arithmetic coding which provides an encoder with finite calculation precision for source sequences over a countable alphabet is presented. Conventional arithmetic coding theoretically has infinite precision for real variables. However any algorithm implemented on a computer has finite precision. This implies that conventional arithmetic codes can only encode sequences over a finite alphabet. The improved arithmetic coding presented here has a computational complexity which is roughly proportional to the length of the source sequence for a given source.
arithmetic coding countable alphabet finite precision of calculation implementation of coding algorithm