Grammar-based lossless universal refinement source coding

A sequence y=(y/sub 1/,...,y/sub n/) is said to be a coarsening of a given finite-alphabet source sequence x=(x/sub 1/,...,x/sub n/) if, for some function /spl phi/, y/sub i/=/spl phi/(x/sub i/) (i=1,...,n). In lossless refinement source coding, it is assumed that the decoder already possesses a coarsening y of a given source sequence x. It is the job of the lossless refinement source encoder to furnish the decoder with a binary codeword B(x|y) which the decoder can employ in combination with y to obtain x. We present a natural grammar-based approach for finding the binary codeword B(x|y) in two steps. In the first step of the grammar-based approach, the encoder furnishes the decoder with O(/spl radic/nlog/sub 2/n) code bits at the beginning of B(x|y) which tell the decoder how to build a context-free grammar G/sub y/ which represents y. The encoder possesses a context-free grammar G/sub x/ which represents x; in the second step of the grammar-based approach, the encoder furnishes the decoder with code bits in the rest of B(x|y) which tell the decoder how to build G/sub x/ from G/sub y/. We prove that our grammar-based lossless refinement source coding scheme is universal in the sense that its maximal redundancy per sample is O(1/log/sub 2/n) for n source samples, with respect to any finite-state lossless refinement source coding scheme. As a by-product, we provide a useful notion of the conditional entropy H(G/sub x/|G/sub y/) of the grammar G/sub x/ given the grammar G/sub y/, which is approximately equal to the length of the codeword B(x|y).