Merge source coding

We show that any comparison-based merging algorithm can be naturally mapped into a source coder via a conversion function introduced here. By applying this function over some well known merging algorithms, namely binary merging and recursive merging, we show that they are closely related to a runlength-based coder with rice coding and to the binary interpolative coder, respectively. Furthermore, by applying the conversion function over the probabilistic merging algorithm we obtain a runlength-based coder that uses a new variant of the rice code, namely randomized rice code. This new code uses a random source of bits with the aim of reducing its average redundancy.