Real-Time Variable-to-Fixed Lossless Source Coding of Randomly Arriving Symbols

TL;DR

This paper introduces real-time variable-to-fixed lossless coding schemes for randomly arriving sources, demonstrating improved delay and information freshness over fixed-to-variable schemes at high traffic, supported by theoretical analysis and simulations.

Contribution

It proposes novel variable-to-fixed coding schemes for causal lossless source coding, outperforming fixed-to-variable schemes in high traffic scenarios using queueing theory insights.

Findings

Variable-to-fixed schemes reduce delay and Age of Information at high traffic.

Theoretical bounds show superior performance of the proposed schemes.

Numerical simulations confirm the advantages over fixed-to-variable schemes.

Abstract

We address the recently suggested problem of causal lossless coding of a randomly arriving source samples. We construct variable-to-fixed coding schemes and show that they outperform the previously considered fixed-to-variable schemes when traffic is high both in terms of delay and Age of Information by appealing to tools from queueing theory. We supplement our theoretical bounds with numerical simulations.