A simple lossless preprocessing algorithm for hardware implementation of Deflate data compression

As more electronic devices enter our daily life, the demand for more data storage space grows with it at an unprecedented pace. This necessitates a more efficient use of storage space, and real time data compression is one solution. Deflate is one of the most popular methods among lossless data compression algorithms. This algorithm has a high performance and is used in many popular applications. In this paper, a preprocessing algorithm has been proposed to improve the compression ratio of the Deflate algorithm. The relatively low computational complexity of the proposed scheme makes it suitable for hardware implementations. Simulation results indicate that the proposed preprocessing improves compression ratio by 3.39%, in average. Furthermore, it can be used with any existing hardware or software implementation of Deflate.