System and method for compressing data in a communication channel utilizing time encoding

摘要

A system and methods for providing data compression of data blocks utilizing time characteristics to increase the transmission time of such data over a communication channel. The underlying principle of data compression using time encoding is that data can be encoded in such a manner that, upon receiving the encoded data at the receiving end of a communication channel, the data content can be retrieved by decoding (decompressing) the compressed data in accordance with the time delays in which data arrives at the receiving end. The present invention employs a method of time encoding for data compression wherein a series of data blocks (e.g., a string of binary data) which are comprised of data units (e.g., bytes or bits) are encoded in such a manner that the following information can be retrieved (i.e., decompressed or decoded) at the receiving end of the communication channel: (1) the content of each data unit can be read (e.g. a string of one byte that represents a character or two bytes which represents a short integer); (2) the time at which each data unit arrives can be measured (e.g., n-th unit arrives at n-th times 1/100 second intervals); and (3) the time interval between each unit at the receiving end can be measured (e.g., the interval between consequent bytes is 1/10000 second). By encoding such time characteristics in the data units of the data blocks, a substantial amount of information may be assigned to each data block, thereby providing data compression and a decrease in the transmission time of such data.