Existence of optimal prefix codes for infinite source alphabets

  • Authors:
  • T. Linder;V. Tarokh;K. Zeger

  • Affiliations:
  • Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., San Diego, La Jolla, CA;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

It is proven that for every random variable with a countably infinite set of outcomes and finite entropy there exists an optimal prefix code which can be constructed from Huffman codes for truncated versions of the random variable, and that the average lengths of any sequence of Huffman codes for the truncated versions converge to that of the optimal code. Also, it is shown that every optimal infinite code achieves Kraft's inequality with equality