Arithmetic Coding and the Move-To-Front method: A study of two data compression schemes

As applications requiring large data files become more common on personal computers a need arises to reduce data file storage requirements. Arithmetic Coding and the Move-To-Front method have been proposed as techniques displaying compression performances superior to the Huffman method. Arithmetic Coding represents a message as an interval of real numbers between 0 and 1. The longer the message, the smaller the interval needed to represent it, and thus the more bits needed to specify the interval. The Move-To-Front method is a locally adaptive heuristic technique that takes advantage of locality of reference, which occurs when symbols are used frequently over intervals and then fall into periods of disuse. This thesis examines Arithmetic Coding and the Move-To-Front method as possible compression techniques to reduce storage requirements for various classes of data. Models are presented along with their performance in specific applications.