International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )

ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 5 September 2013

1

Entropy Coding Technique for Compression of
Satellite Vibration Test Data
Dr. A M Khan
#
, B R Nagendra
*1
, Dr. N K Misra
*2

#
Department of Electronics, Mangalore University, Mangalore, India
asifabc@yahoo.com
*
Facilities, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, India
1
brnag@isac.gov.in
2
nkmisra@isac.gov.in

Abstract Entropy coding is an important stage in any
compression algorithm. During compression process, data is
transformed from one domain to another domain to make use of
the redundancy present in the data. The size of the resultant
transformed data is less compared to original data size and
hence, results in compression of the data. But, the transformed
data is organized in such a way that entropy coding of these
transformed coefficients provides further compression ratio. The
most commonly used techniques of coding are arithmetic coding
and Huffman coding. The performance of each of these
techniques depends on the type of data that the transformed
coefficients represent. In this paper, a comparative study is made
between the performances of the arithmetic and Huffman coding
and suitable entropy coding technique is identified for the
compression of satellite vibration test data. From the results of
the experiments conducted on samples of satellite vibration test
data, it is inferred in this paper that the arithmetic coding
provides better compression ratio, require lesser computation
time and hence it is most effective entropy coding technique that
can be adopted in compression of satellite vibration test data.

Keywordssatellite vibration test; vibration test data; vibration
data compression; entropy coding; arithmetic coding; Huffman
coding;
I. INTRODUCTION
Various environmental tests such as vibration tests, thermo
vacuum tests and acoustic tests are conducted on satellites as
part of design validation, qualification and flight acceptance
requirements. Vibration testing is one of the important
environmental tests being carried out on satellites and its
subsystems, as in [2]. Types of vibration tests that are
conducted on satellite and its subsystems are sine vibration
tests, random vibration tests and shock tests.
High speed data acquisition systems are used to acquire,
analyse and store the vibration test data of the satellites. The
sampling rate at which the data is acquired during vibration
tests varies from 5 KHz to 100 KHz depending on criticality
of the test and range of frequency components to be
considered for analysis. Vibration response levels at about 250
locations on the satellites are monitored to study the dynamic
behaviour of the different satellite components. About 50 GB
of test data, as in [4], is generated during a typical satellite
vibration test. Tens of terra bytes of vibration test data is
generated per year from vibration tests conducted on various
satellites and its subsystems. This huge amount of data is
stored in a centralized data base server at vibration laboratory
of a space organization, for off-line analysis at a later time.
II. COMPRESSION OF SATELLITE VIBRATION TEST DATA
The enormous amount of vibration test data is to be stored
in data server systems and accessing this data over intranet
backbone of the organization at a later time encounters two
challenges. Firstly, it takes several minutes to access data
from the database server. Secondly, the storage space required
for archiving the vibration test data in server system is very
large. The above two issues are resolved by compressing the
satellite vibration test data before its archival. There are
hundreds of compression techniques which are developed for
compressing various types of data. As the performance of the
compression algorithm depends on the characteristics of the
data, there is no single best method for compression of all
types of data. Each compression algorithms provide the best
performance parameters for the associated data sets. One
algorithm will not be effective for the other data set.
Different vibration data sets corresponding to various
vibration environments have unique features such as
frequency distribution, skewness, kurtosis, randomness,
correlations, etc. Hence, there are various algorithms being
developed for variety of vibration test data such as motor
vibrations, seismic vibrations, gear box vibrations, etc., as in
[13]. This paper proposes an the most suitable entropy coding
technique that will be the final stage of the compression
algorithm designed for satellite vibration test data.
III. ENTROPY CODING AND COMPRESSION ALGORITHM
Compression algorithms make use of redundancy in the
data set. To obtain optimal compression ratio, most of the
compression techniques uses transform coding by applying
any of enumerable transform algorithms like Fourier
transforms, wavelet transforms, Hilbert transforms,
KarhunenLoeve transforms, etc, as in [15]. When these
transforms are applied on the real numbered vibration test data
values, the resultant transformed coefficients are also the real
International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 5 September 2013

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numbers. Further compression is obtained by applying entropy
coding, which is the process of representing information in the
most compact form, as in [14]. The pre-requisite process of
entropy coding is to convert the real numbered transformed
coefficients into integer set of data, and the reverse of this
conversion is to be carried out during decoding process. Three
commonly used entropy coding techniques are Huffman
coding, arithmetic coding, Lempel-Ziv coding, as in [1]. All
these entropy coding techniques are lossless coding
techniques and hence original symbol sequence is
reconstructed without any error. Transform coding provides
significant compression by utilizing the redundancy in the
data values, whereas the entropy coding makes use of
probability distribution patterns of the transformed
coefficients and results in further compression of the data, as
in [5]. Hence, entropy coding techniques converts the integer
values representing the transformed coefficients into binary
bit stream and results in increased efficiency of the
compression algorithm. Lempel-Ziv coding is a dictionary
based coding which is suitable for compression of text data.
Hence, Lempel-Ziv coding is not considered in the present
study to identify appropriate entropy coding technique for
satellite vibration test data.
IV. ARITHMETIC CODING
Arithmetic coding is a form of entropy encoding used in
lossless data compression. This coding method assigns one
codeword to entire input symbol stream. Codeword is a
number, representing a segmental sub-section based on the
probabilities of the symbols being coded. The binary
equivalent of this codeword is the resultant bit stream of
arithmetic coding process, as in [8, 12, 16].
Arithmetic coding algorithm divides the probability scale of
0 to 1 into n number of partitions, where 'n' is the number of
symbols of the alphabet set being coded. Each partition
represents each symbol and the partition size is proportional to
probability of occurrence of the corresponding symbol. The
partitions are made in such way that the partition for the
symbol with highest probability starts from zero and the
partition for the symbol with lowest probability is at the end,
near unity.
To code a sequence of 'k' symbols of an alphabet set with
'n' symbols, k iterations are carried out in the coding process.
In each of the iteration, the partition corresponding to the
current symbol being coded is selected. This range is
expanded and re-partitioned with same proportions as done in
the initial iteration for the scale - 0 to 1. After k-iterations,
final range of values is selected and the number with minimal
numerals in the final range is identified and this number is the
arithmetic code of given sequence of k-symbols. The binary
equivalent of this number is the bit stream that is obtained as a
result of arithmetic coding of 'k' symbols of the alphabet set
with n-symbols.
The equations used in arithmetic coding algorithm during
each of the iteration are given below:
L
k
=L
k-1
+ R
k-1
Cp
i
(1)

R
k
=R
k-1
p
i
(2)
CP(S
i
)=L
k
+ R
k
Cp
i
(3)

where,

L
k
= minimum value of the scale in k
th
iteration
R
k
= maximum value of the scale in k
th
iteration
CP(S
i
)=cumulative probability of current symboli
Cp
i
= cumulative probability of symboli in first iteration
p
i
= probability of coded symbol in the previous iteration
This algorithm of arithmetic coding is explained by an
illustration given below. Consider an alphabet set {A, B, C, D,
E} with set of probability of occurrence of each symbol given
by {0.3, 0.25, 0.2, 0.15, 0.1}. The process to generate
arithmetic code for the symbol sequence - {CDBB} is
illustrated pictorially in Fig. 1.
As mentioned earlier arithmetic code generates a single
integer that represents the coded symbol sequence. In the
above example, an integer obtained by removing the decimal
place of the number in the interval identified in final iteration,
i.e 0.71125 to 0.71312, with least number of digits is the
resultant codeword of this arithmetic coding process. Hence,
the arithmetic code for the symbol sequence - {CDBB} is 712
i.e. its equivalent binary bit sequence {1011001000}
represents the symbols sequence - {CDBB}.


Fig. 1 Illustration of Arithmetic coding of the example considered
The decoding algorithm to obtain original set of symbols
requires the information about the alphabet set and its
probability distribution. The above scales are reconstructed
and symbols are extracted during reconstruction of each scale.
It is also essential for encoder to send the number of symbols
encoded or assign a new EOF(End Of File) symbol in the
alphabet, with a very small probability, and encode it at the
end of the message.
One advantage of arithmetic coding over other similar
coding techniques used in data compression is the
E

C

D

B
Lk=0.0 -
-
0.3000 -
-
0.5500 -
-
0.7500 -
-

A
0.9000 -
-
Rk=1.0 -
E

C

D

B
0.5500
--
0.6100 -
-
0.6600 -
-
0.7000 -
-

A
0.7300 -
-
0.7500 -
- E

C

D

B
0.7000 -
-
0.7090 -
-
0.7165 -
-
0.7225 -
-

A
0.7270 -
-
0.7300 -
- E

C

D

B
0.7090
-
0.71125
-
0.71312
-
0.71462
5

A
0.71575
-
0.71650
-
International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 5 September 2013

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convenience of adaptation, as in [6, 9]. Adaptation is the
changing of probability distribution tables while coding the
data. The decoded data matches the original data as long as
the frequency table in decoding is replaced in the same way
and in the same step as in encoding. The synchronization is
usually based on a combination of symbols occurring during
the encoding and decoding process. Adaptive arithmetic
coding significantly improves the compression ratio compared
to static methods. There are various variants of arithmetic
coding which are designed to provide best performance and
the algorithms of each of these variants depend on the type of
data being compressed, as in [3, 10].
V. HUFFMAN CODING
Algorithm for Huffman coding using Huffman tree is
explained below. Let the symbols to be coded is from the
alphabet set-A, with n symbols with each symbol has the
frequency of occurrence - f
i
. The algorithm for Huffman
coding consists of five steps, and each step is explained as in
Fig. 2.
First step of Huffman algorithm results in a tree which is
called the Huffman tree. To obtain the Huffman code for any
symbol, it is required to create the Huffman tree and traverse
from root to the leaf nodes representing the symbol and
generate the binary sequence for each symbol. This process is
explained below using the same example considered to
illustrate arithmetic coding in the previous section.


Fig. 2 Huffman Coding Algorithm
Huffman coding for the four symbols {CDBB} of the
Alphabet set {A, B, C, D, E} with frequencies {30, 25, 20, 15,
10} consists of four iterations which is illustrated in Table 1.
During each of the iteration the symbols with minimum
frequencies are selected.

TABLE I
ITEARATIONS OF HUFFMAN CODING
Itera
-tion
Alphabet Set Frequencies
Symbols
Selected
Frequency
of new
symbol
1 {A, B, C, D, E} {30, 25, 20, 15, 10} n1={D, E} {25}
2 {A, B, C, n1} {30, 25, 20, 25} n2 ={B, C} {45}
3 {A, n2, n1} {30, 45, 25} n3={A, n1} {55}
4 {n3, n2} {55, 45} - -

Huffman tree generated for the above example is shown in
Fig. 3. In the first iteration, symbols D and E are selected and a
new symbol 'n1' is created. In the second iteration, symbols B
and C are selected and a new symbol 'n2' is formed. In the next
iteration, 'n1' and A are combined to create the symbol 'n3'.
Hence the Huffman tree is created from the leaf nodes to the
root, i.e. from bottom to top of the tree, as in [17].
From the Huffman tree for the given alphabet set, the
Huffman dictionary obtained by traversing from the root to
the leaf nodes and binary codes for each symbol is generated.
Hence, the codes generated for the symbols of the example
considered are:
A: 00, B:10, C:11, D:010, E:011
Hence, the Huffman code for the symbols {CDBB} is
{110101010}.
Huffman codes are not unique. Different ways of selecting
symbols results in different set of codes. The decoder must
also have the same Huffman dictionary that was used during
the encoding, as in [11]. The first important feature of
Huffman code is that they are prefix codes, i.e. no codeword is
a prefix of any other codeword. This result in an important
feature, i.e. Huffman decoder unambiguously reconstructs the
original set of symbols. Hence, Huffman code is uniquely
decodable code i.e. has only one possible source string
producing it, as in [7].


Fig. 3 Huffman tree of the illustrated example
1
E=10
0
D=15
1
n2=45
0
n3=55
1
n1=25
0
A=30
1
C=20
0
B=25
Step 1: Pick two symbols 'a','b' from alphabet set-A, with the
smallest frequencies and create a subtree that has these two
characters as leaves. Label the root of this subtree as 'n1'
Step 2: Remove the symbols a and b and add n1 as new
symbol of the Alphabet set-A and set frequency,
f(n1)=f(a)+f(b) for the newly added symbol, n1. The
resulting new alphabet set is:
A
1
=A U {n1} - {a,b}
Number of elements in -A is |A
1
|=|A|-1
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until an alphabet left with only
one symbol.
Step 4 : Construct Huffman dictionary that contains binary
code for each symbol of the alphabet, by traversing from
root to each symbol
Step 5: Generate Huffman binary bit stream for given set of
symbols using Huffman dictionary




International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 5 September 2013

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VI. EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED
As mentioned in the first section of this paper, three
different types of vibration tests are conducted on satellites and
its subsystems. They are random vibration tests, sine vibration
tests and shock tests. Data of each type of test have unique
characteristics, as in [2]. Hence, it is required to carry out
experiments on each type of test data to identify the
appropriate entropy coding technique that provides better
performance for each of the test data.
Data acquired during each of these tests on a typical
satellite are considered and experiments are conducted on these
data sets. Ten different sets of data of each type of vibration
test were used during the experiments. The data set was
conditioned and wavelet decomposition was carried out to
obtain transformed coefficients. The resulting coefficients were
pre-processed by converting them to integers which is an
essential step prior to arithmetic or Huffman coding.
In order to choose the optimal entropy coding technique to
be used in compression of satellite vibration test data, both
arithmetic and Huffman coding were carried out on
transformed coefficients and the performance parameters such
as compression ratio and coding time of both coding
algorithms were computed. The steps used to conduct this
experiment are depicted in Fig. 4.
The satellite vibration test data, which was represented by
real numbers were coded into binary bit stream by using the
algorithm described above. The size of original test data and
the coded binary bit stream were computed to estimate the
compression that was achieved by this algorithm.


Fig. 4 Process of experiment conducted

VII. RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS
The results of experiments conducted on ten data samples
of each of three types of satellite vibration tests are analyzed.
The compression ratio obtained by arithmetic and Huffman
coding for different sets of sine test data is shown in Table II.
TABLE II
COMPARISON OF COMPRESSION RATIO OBTAINED BY ARITHMETIC AND
HUFFMAN CODING FOR SINE VIBRATION DATA
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
1 358.04 59.84 6 34.20 31.95
2 50.98 40.50 7 32.26 30.61
3 54.49 42.54 8 13.19 13.09
4 281.27 58.95 9 325.86 59.61
5 208.28 57.88 10 37.65 34.23
The compression ratio obtained by arithmetic and Huffman
coding for different sets of random test data of a typical
satellite is shown in Table III.
The results observed during arithmetic and Huffman coding
for different sets of shock test data of a typical satellite is
shown in Table IV.
Experiments are conducted by keeping all the parameters of
data conditioning, wavelet transformation, pre-processing
unchanged and arithmetic coding and Huffman coding are
carried out for each data set. Hence, the variations in
compression ratio and computation time were due to the
coding algorithm alone.
TABLE III
COMPARISON OF COMPRESSION RATIO OBTAINED BY ARITHMETIC AND
HUFFMAN CODING FOR RANDOM VIBRATION DATA
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
1 9.32 9.29 6 12.13 12.02
2 9.81 9.76 7 12.69 12.60
3 9.06 9.03 8 11.94 11.87
4 9.95 9.90 9 8.30 8.03
5 8.20 8.17 10 8.41 8.23

TABLE IV
COMPARISON OF COMPRESSION RATIO OBTAINED BY ARITHMETIC AND
HUFFMAN CODING FOR SHOCK VIBRATION DATA
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
Data
Set
Arithmetic
Coding
Huffman
Coding
1 19.70 19.58 6 20.96 20.66
Vibration data for
compression
Data
Conditioning

Wavelet
Decomposition

Coefficients
Pre-processing

Frequency
Estimation

Arithmetic /
Huffman Coding

Coded
Bit Stream

International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 5 September 2013

5

2 20.51 20.28 7 198.59 57.85
3 20.26 19.95 8 264.78 59.92
4 20.28 20.10 9 19.07 18.83
5 20.25 19.92 10 173.22 57.09

It is observed from the above tables that in the all the
experiments conducted on different data sets, arithmetic
coding provided better compression ratio than Huffman
coding. It is also observed that in case of data sets, where
higher compression ratio is obtained, the arithmetic coding is
most suitable compared to the Huffman coding. In case of sine
and shock test data, the compression ratio obtained is high due
to periodicity of sine data and transient nature of shock data.
These two factors leads to the higher redundancy in the
transformed coefficients corresponding to the data and hence
resulted in higher compression ratio. In case of random test
data the redundancy is comparatively less and hence, the
lesser compression ratio is obtained.
The computation time required for carrying out arithmetic
and Huffman coding of transformed coefficients was recorded.
The computational time required to carry out arithmetic and
Huffman coding for different samples of sine, random and
shock vibration test data is noted and averaged values of
computation time of each type of test data is shown in Table V.
This table also shows the computation time required to decode
the binary bit stream and reconstruct the transformed
coefficients. It was ensured that the both arithmetic and
Huffman algorithms were executed on all data sets with same
computational resources. It was observed that computational
time required for execution of arithmetic coding and decoding
was significantly less than that of Huffman coding and
decoding for all three types of satellite vibration test data.
TABLE V
Comparison Of Computation Time Of Arithmetic And Huffman
Coding
Coding Method
Sine
Test Data
Random
Test Data
Shock
Test Data
Arithmetic Coding 23.84 Sec 159.13 sec 26.67 Sec
Huffman Coding 537.01 Sec 690.21 Sec 76.75 Sec
Arithmetic Decoding 35.53 Sec 183.53 sec 32.73 Sec
Huffman Decoding 763.52 Sec 756.24 Sec 96.67 Sec


VIII. CONCLUSION
From observation made based on the results of the
experiments conducted, it is concluded that the arithmetic
coding is most suitable entropy coding technique for
compression of satellite vibration test data in order obtain the
maximum compression ratio and least coding time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors wish to acknowledge S N Prakash, V Ramesh
Naidu, A R Prashant and M Madheswaran of Vibration
Laboratory, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, India, for the
support given to carry out the present study.
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