Lossless compression of waveform data for efficient storage and transmission

A two-stage technique for lossless waveform data compression is described. The first stage is a modified form of linear prediction with discrete coefficients, and the second stage is bilevel sequence coding. The linear predictor generates an error or residue sequence in a way such that exact reconstruction of the original data sequence can be accomplished with a simple algorithm. The residue sequence is essentially white Gaussian with seismic or other similar waveform data. Bilevel sequence coding, in which two sample sizes are chosen and the residue sequence is encoded into subsequences that alternate from one level to the other, further compresses the residue sequence. The algorithm is lossless, allowing exact, bit-for-bit recovery of the original data sequence. The performance of the algorithm at each stage is analyzed. Applications of the two-stage technique to typical seismic data indicates that an average number of compressed bits per sample close to the lower bound is achievable in practical situations