Fast decoding algorithms for variable-lengths codes

Data compression has been widely applied in many data processing areas. Compression methods use variable-length codes with the shorter codes assigned to symbols or groups of symbols that appear in the data frequently. There exist many coding algorithms, e.g. Elias-delta codes, Fibonacci codes and other variable-length codes which are often applied to encoding of numbers. Although we often do not consider time consumption of decompression as well as compression algorithms, there are cases where the decompression time is a critical issue. For example, a real-time compression of data structures, applied in the case of the physical implementation of database management systems, follows this issue. In this case, pages of a data structure are decompressed during every reading from a secondary storage into the main memory or items of a page are decompressed during every access to the page. Obviously, efficiency of a decompression algorithm is extremely important. Since fast decoding algorithms were not known until recently, variable-length codes have not been used in the data processing area. In this article, we introduce fast decoding algorithms for Elias-delta, Fibonacci of order 2 as well as Fibonacci of order 3 codes. We provide a theoretical background making these fast algorithms possible. Moreover, we introduce a new code, called the Elias–Fibonacci code, with a lower compression ratio than the Fibonacci of order 3 code for lower numbers; however, this new code provides a faster decoding time than other tested codes. Codes of Elias–Fibonacci are shorter than other compared codes for numbers longer than 26 bits. All these algorithms are suitable in the case of data processing tasks with special emphasis on the decompression time.