Abstract:In this paper, we present a new data structure element for constructing a Huffman tree, and a new algorithm is developed to improve the efficiency of Huffman coding by constructing the Huffman tree synchronously with the generation of codewords. The improved algorithm is adopted in a VLSI architecture for a Huffman encoder. The VLSI implementation is realized using the Verilog hardware description language and simulated by Modelsim. The proposed scheme achieves rapid coding speed with a gate count of 9.962 K using SMIC 0.18 micron standard library cells.