The Z-coder adaptive binary coder

We present the Z-coder, a new adaptive data compression coder for coding binary data. The Z-coder is derived from the Golomb (1966) run-length coder, and retains most of the speed and simplicity of the earlier coder. The Z-coder can also be thought of as a multiplication-free approximate arithmetic coder, showing the close relationship between run-length coding and arithmetic coding. The Z-coder improves upon existing arithmetic coders by its speed and its principled design. We present a derivation of the Z-coder as well as details of the construction of its adaptive probability estimation table.