Transformed HCT for parallel Huffman decoding

This paper proposes a novel and generic Huffman code table (HCT) transform and a simple parallel Huffman decoding method. Codes of the original HCT are left-aligned, reordered in value, and partitioned into sub-bands. Two kinds of modification to the codes are introduced in order to reduce the number of sub-bands. The Huffman decoder can be implemented with a minimized size of single LUT, and the parallel decoding can be completed easily, at a constant rate of up to one code per cycle. An example of MP3 decoder and AAC decoder has been designed to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.