N-ary Huffman Encoding Using High-Degree Trees -- A Performance Comparison

Abstract: In this paper we implement an n-ary Huffman Encoding and Decoding application using different degrees of tree structures. Our goal is to compare the performance of the algorithm in terms of compression ratio, decompression speed and weighted path length when using higher degree trees, compared to the 2-ary Huffman Code. The Huffman tree degrees that we compare are 2-ary, 3-ary, 4-ary, 5-ary, 6-ary, 7-ary, 8-ary and 16-mal. We also present the impact that branch prediction has on the performance of the n-ary Huffman Decoding.