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 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. In this paper we present a derivation of the Z-Coder as well as details of the construction of its adaptive probability estimation table.