An architecture for lossy compression of waveforms using piecewise-linear approximation

Lossy compression schemes are often desirable in many signal processing applications such as the compression of ECG data. This paper presents a relaxation of a provably good algorithm for lossy signal compression, based on the piecewise linear approximation of functions. The algorithm approximates the data within a given tolerance using a piecewise linear function. The paper also describes an architecture suitable for the single-chip implementation of the proposed algorithm. The design consists of control, two multiply/divide units, four adder/subtracter units, and an I/O interface unit. For uniformly sampled data, no division is required, and all operations can be completed in a pipelined manner in at most three cycles per sample point. The corresponding simplified architecture is also presented. >