On Overflow and Underflow Problems in Buffer-Instrumented Variable-Length Coding of Fixed-Rate Memoryless Sources

Nariman Farvardin, James W. Modestino

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is well-known that variable-length coding schemes can be employed in entropy encoding of finite-alphabet sources. To transmit these codes over a synchronous channel, however, requires a buffer. Since in practice this buffer is of finite size, it is subject to both overflow and underflow. The buffer behavior is studied with particular application to Huffman coding of the outputs of an optimum uniform-threshold quantizer driven by a memoryless Gaussian source. Fairly general upper and lower bounds on the average terminal time are developed. Under certain conditions, the tightness of these bounds is verified, and asymptotic formulas are developed. As an example, an encoding scheme employing Huffman codes in conjunction with uniform quantization of memoryless Gaussian sources is considered, and the buffer behavior as a function of the buffer size and output rate is studied.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)839-845
Number of pages7
JournalIEEE Transactions on Information Theory
Volume32
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1986

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