Two schemes for block-based transmission of variable-length codes

This paper investigates the error span limitation of variable-length codes (VLC) by placing them into fixed length blocks. Two schemes of block composition are examined: the use of zero bits padding and appended marker code (first scheme) and then padding bits only (second scheme). It is observed that the error span is limited in both schemes but the second scheme with reduced overhead performs better when the sequential decoding of VLC is exploited.