On match lengths and the asymptotic behavior of Sliding Window Lempel-Ziv algorithm for zero entropy sequences

The Sliding Window Lempel-Ziv (SWLZ) algorithm has been studied from various perspectives in information theory literature. In this paper, we provide a general law which defines the asymptotics of match length for stationary and ergodic zero entropy processes. Moreover, we use this law to choose the match length L
_o
in the almost sure optimality proof of Fixed Shift Variant of Lempel-Ziv (FSLZ) and SWLZ algorithms given in literature. First, through an example of stationary and ergodic processes generated by irrational rotation we establish that for a window size of n
_w
a compression ratio given by O(log n
_w
/n
^w
_a
) where a is arbitrarily close to 1 and 0 <; a <; 1, is obtained under the application of FSLZ and SWLZ algorithms. Further, we give a general expression for the compression ratio for a class of stationary and totally ergodic processes with zero entropy.