Efficient VLSI implementation of a VLC decoder for universal variable length code

Variable length code (VLC) is used in a large variety of lossless compression applications. A specially designed VLC, called "Universal Variable Length Code" (UVLC), is utilized in the latest video coding standard H.26L under development. In this work we develop an efficient decoder for UVLC by utilizing the special properties of UVLC which perform coding in an alternating way (ALT). We compare the ALT decoder with the decoder called "VLC decoder using plane separation" (PLS) which is claimed to be one of the most effective VLC decoders. Our results show that the ALT decoder is 1.34 times faster 1.7 times smaller and consumes 45% power in comparison to the PLS decoder.