The performance of text file compression using Shannon-Fano and Huffman on small mobile devices

Abstract

Textual information has grown tremendously generated from mobile user to digital libraries and archival text data from many internet sources. Many programs for data compression have been developed. However, mostly are only efficient to read small/brief files but inefficient, not even applicable, for very large files, especially on mobile devices. This is because the algorithm is too heavy to process and the design specification is to read short files that are repeated. In addition, large file sizes when transferred will require longer transfer times, larger space and higher costs, as file transfer rates are affected by internet network speed and file size. Text compression can be considered as a possible best approach in reducing storage space efficiently and accelerate transmission speed. In this study Shanno-Fano and Huffman algorithm has been evaluated and also the possible compression method on smartcard has been discussed. The aim of this study is to produce a compression method that produces text files with the smallest ratios and the fastest compression and de-compression times especially on mobile devices. This study improves file compression performance in order to obtain better file size, compression ratio, and compression time especially on text processing.