Huffman Coding-Based Compression Unit for Embedded Systems

The need for an efficient way to store data makes compression a common task. Huffman Coding is a technique used for loss less compression of data. In an embedded system whose main memory resources are limited, to perform the coding could be risky because it could construct very deep or wide trees. The purpose of this article is to show the design and implementation of a circuit that performs a coding of text files without using the main memory of the system. This circuit was added to a FPGA with embedded processor, therefore creating an embedded system or a system on a chip (SoC).