Delayed Dictionary Compression

The Invention

A family of compression algorithms for data transmission that allows a high compression ratio and also a very good latency.

Background

The world wide explosion of usage in smart phones and tablets causes a severe burden on cellular infrastructures. Cellular operators are seeking desperately for bandwidth enhancement solutions. For example, in India alone, every month 7 million new people are joining cellular networks.

Data compression is a preferred solution, since there is no need to dig in the ground for many kilometers in order to build new high bandwidth links.

The Delayed Dictionary Compression (DDC) family of algorithms was invented by Prof. Yossi Matias and Mr. Raanan Refua. The motivation was to release the bottleneck of low level infrastructures - data transfer links.

The Need

Current data compression techniques for packet networks allow a good compression and a poor latency, or poor compression ratio and a good latency.

Advantages

Much more data can be transferred over communication links, with a small delay (possibly zero if so desired). The result is better application behavior for the end user.

Since DDC is a general method, it is suitable for the compression of many types of data. In particular it is perfect for cellular data compression, voice compression and others.

Another benefit of DDC is saving battery life for mobile phones, since transmitting/receiving compressed data requires much less energy than uncompressed data. This is critical for the mobile industry.

Patent

US granted patent 7,630,394

Project manager

Oren Calfon
VP Business Development, ICT

Project researchers

Yossi Matias
T.A.U Tel Aviv University, Exact Sciences
School of Computer Science