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## Numerical accuracy

The basic idea of an arithmetic coder is not particularly difficult to comprehend and this can give the deceptive expectation that also implementation would be easy. It is not easy. The crux of error-free implementation is that arithmetic coding is based on a recursive algorithm, which in principle requires infinite numerical accuracy, which is obviously impossible. Implementation on a practical devices requires that all intermediate operations are performed with fixed-accuracy operations.

To further complicate the issue, it is paramount that the coder works exactly the same at both the encoder and decoder. Since we are working with "infinite accuracy", any small deviation, a single incorrect bit somewhere, would corrupt the whole remaining bitstream. Different CPUs have often different accuracy in their floating-point operations and low-cost CPUs often do not even feature floating-point operations, such that floating-point computations are usually not applicable. The remaining choice is fixed-point arithmetic, where we use integer operations only, such that the decimal comma is at a pre-determined location.

Many modern CPUs feature 64-bit integer operations, but we usually need to implement algorithms such that they work also on low-cost CPUs and therefore choose to use 32-bit operations only. However, since the output of a multiplication of two N-bit values will have 2N bits, the range of input values must be 16 bits on a 32-bit CPU. To allow for signed integers, we reduce that to 15 bits. In some rare cases, behaviour in overflow situations or rounding of the least significant bit will differ across CPUs, such that we need to avoid also those and reduce the effective length of representations to 14 bits. In other words, all input values to an arithmetic coder must remain in the interval 0 to (2^14)-1 = 16383. As we shall see, there will be some further restrictions down the line, put on the difference between adjacent values.

## Encoder

Recall that arithmetic coding is based on range-coding, where the likelihood of a symbol corresponds to the width of the corresponding range. A particular symbol is thus encoded by any number which falls into the range assigned to that symbol. For example, if we have three symbols, a, b and c, with likelihoods 0.22, 0.55 and 0.23, then we can choose that all number in the range 0 to 0.22 correspond to symbol a, all numbers in 0.22 to 0.77 to b and 0.77 to 1.0 to c. Notice that the width of each range thus corresponds to the corresponding likelihood.

These ranges must however be represented as fixed-point values. Since all numbers are within the interval 0 to 1.0, we can map these numbers to integer values in the range 0 to 16384 (note that 16384 has in fact 15 bits, but since it signifies a border value, this does not cause problems). The three ranges are thus rounded to 0 to 3604, 3604 to 12616, and 12616 to 16384.

If we would start by encoding a symbol a, then the remaining range is 0 to 3604. If we would continue encoding within that range, then the numerical accuracy would be much smaller than 14 bits (effectively only log2(3604)=11 bits). The first key idea here is to scale up the numerical range by encoding bits which are already known. If the range 0 to 16384 is split into two, such that the two ranges

Mathinline
0 \leq x < 8192

and

Mathinline
8192 \leq x < 16384

we can encode a first bit with 0 and 1, respectively. Once we have encoded the first bit, we map the interval back to 0 to 16384. That is, if first bit is 0, then we remap

Mathinline
x:=2x

, otherwise

Mathinline
x:=2(x-8192)

. In our case, the range 0 to 3604 below 8192, we encode a 0 and the range is mapped to 0 to 7208. This is still below 8192, so we encode a second 0 and remap again to get a range 0 to 14416. The numerical range is now less than the full 14 bits, but it is the best we can do with a 14 bit representation for a range which is not aligned with a power of 2.

Similarly, if we would want to encode a symbol c, we would have the remaining range 12616 to 16384, encode a 1 and remap to 8838 to 16384, encode a second 1 and remap to 1312 to 16384.

If we however encode a symbol b, the remaining range is 3604 to 12616, where the lower limit is below 8192 and the upper limit is above 8192, so we cannot encode a bit directly, but should continue to encoding the next symbol.

We then need to remap the ranges of the three symbols, from 0, 3604, 12616, 16384 to the range 3604 to 12616. To map the borders b0, to bN, to the range

Mathinline
[r_0,\,r_1]

we use the formula

Mathdisplay
b_k' := r_0 + \left\lfloor \frac{b_k (r_1-r_0)}{b_N-b_0} \right\rceil

such that the new intervals are 3604, 5586, 10543, 12616 and where the brackets

Mathinline
\lfloor\cdot\rceil

signify rounding to nearest integer. Observe that 16384 = 2^14, such that the division can be replaced by a right-shift of 14 steps, for a large reduction in computation time.

We can then proceed to encoding the second symbol:

• If second symbol is a, then the new range is 3604 to 5586, we encode a 0, and remap to 7208 to 11172.
• If second symbol is b, then the new range is 5585 to 10543.
• If second symbol is c, then the new range is 10543 to 12616, we encode a 1, and remap to 4702 to 8848.

In all three cases, we cannot proceed further, since the remaining range includes the mid-point 8192. However, in all three cases, the range is now rather small (respectively, 3964, 4957 and 4146), such that if we remap the next symbols into that range, then their accuracy would be significantly reduced. In fact, we can readily find examples where the range diminishes so much that we do not have unique ranges for all the symbols any more, such that the string of symbols cannot be decoded anymore.

We therefore need an additional option, in addition to encoding a 0 or 1, which allows extending the current range to maintain numerical accuracy. A practical solution is to find a new category of "postponed bits", where some bits are stored into a queue, whose value is determined only later.

Specifically, let the current range be

Mathinline
[r_0,\,r_1]

and the upper limit of numerical range be R. If

Mathinline
r_0 > R/4

, and

Mathinline
r_1 < 3R/4

, then we postpone one bit and remap the range as

Mathdisplay
r_k':=2(r_k-N/4).

In essence, we discard the quarters at the left and right ends, and extend the middle of the range to cover the whole available range.

All postponed bits get encoded when we next time get a bit to encode. Specifically, if the number of postponed bits is p, and the next bit to encode is 0, then we encode a 0 and p 1's. Similarly, if the next bit to encode is a 0, then we encode a 1 and p 0's.

With these rules we can encode any string of symbols. However, as the string of symbols comes to an end, the remaining range still contains information which is not encoded to the bit stream. We thus have to flush the range with the smallest of number bits. We achieve this as follows. Suppose the remaining range is

Mathinline
[r_0,\,r_1]

. By necessity, the range must include the mid-point R/2, where R is the upper limit of the numerical range. We would like to encode the shortest bitstream which uniquely identifies this range. Out of the ranges

Mathinline
[r_0,\,R]

and

Mathinline
[R,\,r_1]

, we therefore choose to encode the range which is larger (=more likely);

• If

Mathinline
R-r_0 > r_1-R

, then we encode a 0 and the new current range is 0 to 2r0.

• If

Mathinline
R-r_0 <= r_1-R

, then we encode a 1 and the new current range is 2(r1-R/2) to 1.

We continue encoding bits iteratively with this rule until the current range covers the whole interval 0 to R.

## Decoder

At the decoder we in principle revert the operations of the encoder. However, as was demonstrated with flushing of the bitstream, which is required as the last step of encoding, the current range includes information about symbols which have not yet been written into the bitstream. We therefore have to decode the bits corresponding to the steps in the encoder, but also metaphorically, flush the bitstream for every iteration, to decode the information left in the range. In pseudo-code, the algorithm can be stated as

1. As long as there are bits left
1. Save current state of the bitstream
2. Decode as many bits as required to determine current symbol
3. Restore state of the bitstream
4. Repeat the range-remapping steps of the encoder and remove the corresponding number of bits from the bitstream

As an example, consider the same example as above, where the intervals for a,b and c are 0, 3604, 12616, 16384 and the first symbol is b. At the encoder, we did not encode any bits for b but the range was updated to 3604 and 12616. At the decoder, the initial range is 0 to 16384 and we therefore have to decode several bits until we can determine that the symbol is b. However, to make sure that we have exactly the same coder state as at the encoder, we then restore the bits to the bitstream, and proceed as we would not have decoded any bits when decoding the second symbol from range 3604 to 12616.